Minimum Viable Product

MVP Overview

• “It’s not necessarily minimal nor a product nor viable!”
• MVP is not a perfectly descriptive term
• Smallest increment of work that will test a hypothesis (or more than one)
• You need to be able to say what hypothesis it will test and how you will judge the result.

What forms can it take?

• The key is that it is MINIMUM!
• MVP is always always related to a hypothesis (or more than one)
• Who and where do you show your MVP?
  • Product Reviews of other products might give you names
  • Other feedback fora
  • Think about: where do they congregate?
  • Who are they?
  • Find a way to observe them

What role does the MVP Play

• Goal is to test articulated hypotheses
• MVP different from a prototype, beta test, mockup because of it’s explicit purpose
• Visionaries or early adopters accept expect a product that is incomplete. They want to be ahead
• Early adopters want to feel special: be the first one on the block with a product, or have an unfair advantage over other companies.
• If you leave out features, customer often fills in the blanks which may suggest missing features