Debunking MVP Myths
When it comes to describing a minimum viable product (MVP), everyone talks a different language, based on their product requirements, experience, and perception. Indeed, the MVP is a debatable topic, as the name itself is ambiguous enough to create more hypotheses around it. This article explains my view and attempts to debunk myths and provide a clearer picture of the MVP for new product development.
What is the MVP in the context of product development?
Eric Reis puts it this way: “The minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.”
In short, the MVP is a first shippable version of the product, with little investment or effort and only core features, to gain an understanding of customer behavior, acceptance, and their further needs. The MVP is nothing more than solving the problem with the most basic solution.
Here’s a breakdown:
- Minimum: Minimum (even more minimum than you expect) efforts, scope, and investments.
- Viable: Usable, optimized, and more professional.
- Minimum + Viable: Simple enough to be used by or to attract early adopters.
- Product: A shippable, measurable, and usable product.
In the example below, to meet the product vision, the MVP (a simple doughnut) was created to validate whether customers liked the taste. So this MVP meets all three requirements.
- Minimum: Yes, it has minimum cost, investment, and only a core feature, which is a doughnut.
- Viable: Yes, it’s usable and can be consumed by the customer.
- Product: Yes, you can call it a product because it’s shippable, measurable, and usable.
What the MVP is not
I’ve heard many people refer to the MVP as just a landing page or just a video to grab the attention of customers, so that they can define their market and understand their response. This is actually called a market survey, checking whether there is a need for such a product in the market. Certainly it’s not an MVP.
The MVP is also certainly not a prototype, set of wireframes, proof of concept, or individual features of the product. All of these enable us to set the foundation to create the MVP, but they cannot be called the MVP because they cannot be shipped to the customer for their use. They can be used to survey the market and to understand the target customers.
However, people refer to the Dropbox prototype video and the Buffer and Pebble Kickstarter landing pages as MVPs, which I personally don’t think they are. I agree that all these examples are excellent for getting customers’ attention and learning about their response (positive or negative) before making the actual product, but these can be termed market surveys and not MVPs, because customers can’t use them.
What is the purpose of the MVP?
The MVP is extremely important and useful for new product development, especially when you don’t have much insight into your customers and their behaviors.
Below are some of the key purposes of the MVP:
- Test a product hypothesis with minimal resources
- Expedite learning
- Reduce wasted engineering hours on unnecessary features
- Get the product to customers as early adopters for their feedback and recognize their needs in the early stages
- Form a base for other products
- Reduce risk significantly by avoiding unnecessary features and their development costs
- Rapidly make iterations of the MVP until we get positive signals from customers
How to develop a successful MVP
According to the Lean start-up process, developing an MVP is even more minimal then you actually think. The MVP may or may not be a single iteration process. Depending on customer reactions, you may have to create multiple iterations of the MVP until you hit a nerve with your customers.
Below are the basic steps to follow for a successful MVP:
- Scale up your idea to solve the problem. Groom it and make it into a product vision. List only your key features. Then, pick only those few features that you feel are just enough to solve the customer’s core problem and also help your product to stand out from the rest in the market.
- Develop those features to form a basic version of your product. Once developed, reach out to your customers, motivate them to use it, and create a buzz around your product.
- This is an extremely important stage of MVP production. Learn about customer activity, their likes/dislikes, their user journey with the product, and their suggestions.
- Use these learnings to update your product vision and repeat steps 1 to 3 until you get that positive signal from customers required to make it into a more mature product.
Which are successful MVPs?
Below are some of the companies whose products started out with basic features that evolved into huge successes.
Apple iPhone
Apple’s first iPhone was lacking basic features, such as copy-and-paste, but instead of wasting their time and resources on such features, they chose to launch it to gauge customers’ response. It was minimum, with only core features of a mobile phone; viable, as it was usable by the customers; and it was a shippable product.
Airbnb
The founders of Airbnb took pictures of their apartment building and posted them to a simple website for customers to book a room in their building. Soon they had three customers wanting the rooms. It was minimum, viable, and a product that was actually used by the customer to book the room.
Groupon
Groupon, which started as a WordPress blog, began by manually posting deals each day. When someone signed up for a particular deal, the Groupon team would generate a PDF document and email it. It was minimum, as they didn’t invest any time into developing a coupon system and designing a new website, and a viable product because people were actually able to sign up and receive PDF coupons through their email.
I hope my attempt at explaining the MVP helps you debunk myths about it. I would be extremely interested to know your take on the MVP. Please add your comments to make this forum more informative for all of us.
Source: https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2017/april/debunking-mvp-myths
