Types of Minimum Viable Products [Series]: Piecemeal

My series on the seven primary types of minimum viable products (MVPs) continues by looking at the piecemeal MVP.

If you aren’t familiar with the series, we’ve done a deeper dive into email campaign MVPs, single feature application MVPs, preorder/crowdfunding MVPs, Wizard of Oz MVPs, and concierge MVPs.

What is a Piecemeal Minimum Viable Product?

A piecemeal MVP is perhaps the most challenging minimum viable product type to give a concrete definition.

Simply speaking, a piecemeal MVP refers to a launch where a product or service is provided by using a combination of tools that already exist. These tools will more than likely be third-party software or applications in today’s world (though it’s not necessarily limited to the digital realm, you could use in-person services, too).

When it comes to launching your product or service, it can often be easier to fill in specific gaps with a third-party service or app rather than spending the time to develop that aspect of the product yourself.

What do you do to create it?

In a way, the piecemeal MVP is when the whole is more valuable than the sum of its individual parts by filling in features by using outside sources:

• First, identify a new or better service or product that you want to provide
• You’ll combine third-party services such as chat programs, file and work collaboration sites, mailing list creation services, photo sharing pages, and others that you can easily leverage to create some sort of new viable product experience
• Similarly to a concierge service, instead of relying on automation to provide the service, you’ll be the connection between the services to create a “complete” offering
• Gather first-hand customer feedback and demand for the piecemeal product or service to determine whether to move forward

For an entrepreneur, using these third-party services will allow you to test the viability and market desire behind a product idea without the proprietary development ahead of time.

Know you may run into challenges when you decide to build the full product or service yourself. Although it may be possible to recreate the services you have relied on, it may also be necessary to partner with these other services that have become integral to your product. You need to be realistic about what you can actually see yourself recreating down the road.

Pros of Using a Piecemeal MVP

• Using third-party services/tools allows you to keep costs, staffing, and development time low
• With the nearly limitless amount of applications available, there are endless possibilities for unique tools or services for you to use
• Intimate usage of high-quality products can give you a great deal of insight for when you develop your own variation of the service

Cons of Using a Piecemeal MVP

• A piecemeal MVP requires you to rely on another site or product to function, which means you rely on their uptime and functionality
• You’ll need to have a good understanding of each of the tools you’re using
• When you’re ready to fully develop your product, it can be difficult to recreate a service or function as you had initially thought

Piecemeal Minimum Viable Product Examples

These are some real-world examples of piecemeal MVPs in action:

Groupon: Groupon is now an immense and incredibly successful corporation, and it all began with co-founders Andrew Mason and Eric Lefkofsky and a few third-party services. Groupon would grow into a vast operation with hundreds of account managers, coders, and salespeople… but the MVP was launched on a WordPress site. They created PDF coupons using FileMaker, and Apple Mail was used to automate their email delivery.

As the service took off and demand grew, they were able to bring on experts capable of helping them flesh out the concept and bring the service in-house.

BetterSpaces: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the wellness company BetterSpaces was forced to transition from an in‑person business to an entirely digital one. This transition required them to pioneer new services and offerings for their audience. By moving all of their marketing and outreach efforts onto the email provider MailChimp and creating a series of virtual Zoom classes, BetterSpaces quickly created several new digital services with little to no initial investment. Over time, the company has begun to develop its own video hosting services and a full-fledged classroom app that does not require Zoom.

A Final Note on Piecemeal Minimum Viable Products

A piecemeal MVP can be a quick and easy way to get a service up and running, but it may not be as easy to recreate and scale up a service you rely on as easily as you may initially think. Try to factor in the costs and value associated with the third-party tools you rely on, and be sure that these services are not likely to disappear or be discontinued anytime soon.