The ‘M’ in MVP is dangerously misleading

We all know words matter. Even single characters can matter: “Thanks.” and “Thanks!” can be interpreted very differently.

When people talk about an MVP, the implication is that the Product has the absolute Minimum set of features required to be Viably used by a target audience (usually to the point that they’d pay for it).

The M in MVP has unwittingly become, for some, an endorsement of cutting corners.

Until recently, I was guilty of this way of thinking: that the M in MVP meant that the minimum amount of effort should be put into features.

• Text wrapping weird on mobile? Ship it! It’s an MVP!
• That button says “Send” but it’s not perfectly clear what it’s sending? Ship it! It’s an MVP!
• There’s no spinner to indicate that a certain piece of content is loading asynchronously? Ship it! It’s an MVP!

I could, embarrassingly, keep going like this for a while.

As technology’s pervasiveness continues to expand beyond The Realm of the Nerds & Tech Savvy, and into the minds of the old, the young, and less developed countries, we need to constantly reevaluate what that means for how we build software.

The average web user is dichotomously becoming less “nerdy” and more “savvy”. They might be, on average, less familiar with the underlying concepts of software design and the Internet, but they’re also coming to expect certain things from software. They understand that apps have Settings. They understand that apps have a Login. They understand that logging in w/ Twitter is different than logging in with Facebook is different than logging in w/ Email. This might sound silly, but it wasn’t too long ago that these were foreign concepts to all of us.

As this world continues to reshape itself, we need to become more considerate about how we build products. We need to remember that the M in MVP means that the number of features should be minimal. It does not mean that the effort put into creating those features should be minimal. On the contrary: with so few features in your product, you really have no excuse not to make them perfect.