Product Ownership Techniques — #1 Minimum Viable Product

In one of my previous posts, I would have mentioned my thoughts to start writing about Business Analysis Techniques.

Here I’m, starting with the techniques that are prominently used in Agile Methodologies (as mentioned in CPOA -IIBA). In addition, will also cover a few important techniques mentioned as in CBAP Business Analysis Techniques.

So, let’s get started!

What is an MVP?

Minimum Viable Product is the smallest set of core features available to the market in the shortest time possible, that delivers value to the stakeholders and the early adopters. Once an MVP is made available, the rest of the features can be iteratively built upon further feedback.

MVP can be applied to

• Product Development
• Services (To see if the customers are willing to pay for it)
• Deploy features (to check how the users react) and
• Differentiation (for testing a particular marketing strategy).

What is an MVP?

What are the Components of MVP?

There are 4 major components of MVP,

Target Audience: Identifying the target market and the early adopter of the product or the solution.

Hypothesis: Understand what hypothesis needs to be tested with the users.

Defined Requirements: Select only the necessary requirements based on the target audience, expected goals and steps to measure the learnings.

Mechanism to measure the learning: Necessary measurements should be identified to test the hypothesis, get the feedback and record the learnings.

An example of MVP could be as simple as a Home-Baking venture. Even before I plan to open a shop or start an online sale, I can

Identify target audience: My community neighbours with kids of age 5–18 years

Hypothesis: Millet based no sugar baked goodies can be substitutes for the regular store-bought cookies.

Define Requirements: Deliver Icing less Muffins and Cookies with limited flavours.

Measure the learning: Feedback on taste, Referrals through word of mouth, Reorder rate, Suggestions to come with additional flavours.

I hope, with the above example, you might have got a fair idea of what constitutes the components of MVP!

Now, let’s see in detail on,

What is the process to create an MVP?

Step 1: Determine the purpose of MVP:

Here, you basically see what idea you are trying to validate in order to understand the user’s desirability.

Step 2: Select the Type of MVP to be used

The type of MVP could be as simple as a button click leading to a page, or a web page that can perform a minimum function like selecting a product and adding in a cart, or like the above example discussed, door delivering the product as and when the order comes from the early adopters.

Here, you decide what minimal features are required to be delivered to users, in order to receive the desired feedback from the customers. It all depends on what type of product is being considered and the amount of investment you have in hand.

Step 3: Minimal features to test your Hypothesis

Here, you have to come up with the core set of features that helps the user to accomplish a particular task and solve the need/problem.

You need to have a clear vision of what could be your “Must-haves” and “Nice to haves” and prioritize only the important “must-haves” that should be considered. You can also conduct user journey sessions with the intended customers, determine their pain points and try to solve the problem that is going to delight them.

Considering our example, you can hand over cookies and muffin samples to your customers, get feedback on their taste preference, general likeliness (major votes for carrot muffins, oatmeal cookies) and especially details on how it satisfies their hunger and keeps the calories under check.

Step 4: Build a Roadmap

Step 3, being a major success, it’s time to convert the Minimal Viable Product (MVP) to Minimum Marketable Feature (MMF) and then to Minimum Marketable Product (MMP). Here, you build the product roadmap that has the set of features that will be prioritized and available for release in the upcoming days.

Step 5: Measure your learning

Now, with every incremental release, you get feedback and suggestions from the customers. These inputs from the customers are captured, prioritized and rolled out for customer use. And the cycle continues!

Though MVP reduces the cost and the risk, by determining the customer feedback at the early stage, there are certain limitations to it.

For instance, good knowledge about the competitive landscape is required to even come up with a hypothesis. Also, the sampling should be huge enough to understand the behaviour of the majority of the users.

And most importantly, there is no fixed formula to implement the MVP, as it is entirely dependent on what problem you are trying to address.

Hope you got a basic understanding of what an MVP is about and the possible steps to be considered!

See you soon with the next technique!

Credits: IIBA-CPOA