Minimum Viable Product vs. Minimum Features Product

The idea of minimum viable product (MVP) is very popular with startups, especially those in the software and digital solutions space. However, more often than not, MVPs turn into MFPs (minimum features product).

The issue is that in planning MVPs, the business operations (such as sales), product and engineering teams focus on a feature set instead of focusing on the core problem and trying to solve for that.

In this piece, I have tried to highlight key differences between MVPs and MFPs.

1. MVPs solve for small but critical parts of a very big problem. For example, if the problem is that a person’s legs hurt from standing and the floor is dirty, the minimum viable product to solve the problem would be a simple, quickly made, low quality (therefore low cost) stool. However, in solving this problem, one might easily consider that a person’s back might also hurt since it doesn’t have anything to rest on (thus suggesting the need to build a chair), and then go even further to think that a person’s hips might also start hurting from sitting on a hardwood surface (thus necessitating the need to add a cushion or foam on the chair). And so, we are no longer talking about MVP, but more about a minimum features product to solve a few different problems. It’s best to create the MVP and then seek user feedback to…