MVP: Why It Isn't Always Release 1

- Many teams mistakenly assume that a minimum viable product, MVP, is released one or needs to be a live coded product or feature. In this video, we'll discuss what an MVP truly is, what it was intended for, and how to define an appropriate MVP for testing your ideas. But first, let's define what an MVP is.

An MVP is a reasonable representation of your product that maximizes feedback on your core value proposition. This concept originally came from the Lean Startup Movement as a way for companies to test business ideas quickly and at minimal cost. Put more simply.

At its core, an MVP is an experiment. If the experiment fails, a team should be willing to reject the idea or rework it. To help you identify what your MVP should be, ask yourself these four questions.

First, what's the idea you're considering? Is it a product, a feature, or a service? Identifying this lays the groundwork for your MVP.

Second, what is the value proposition behind that idea? In other words, what unique value does your idea offer to its target audience, whether they are consumers, internal stakeholders, or B2B clients? Articulating this is critical for alignment and focus.

Third, what feedback do you need? Identify the specific insights you need to determine whether the value proposition is actually something your customers find valuable. Fourth, how can you create a simple yet practical representation of your value proposition that maximizes feedback?

Sometimes a live launch is necessary, but often a prototype can provide the insights you need without the investment of developing and launching code. Let's walk through an example. Imagine a grocery store wants to explore the idea of delivering small grocery orders to customers cheaply via drones.

The value proposition of this idea might be that customers want to restock their refrigerators without leaving home at a low cost. We need feedback on whether there is market demand for this service to gather this feedback. We might monitor how many people choose to have groceries delivered this way.

We may also wanna learn how satisfied customers are with a delivery. A practical representation of the value proposition might be having people instead of drones deliver the groceries and offer reduced delivery fees. This would be the simplest and most practical version of the value proposition, and it would elicit the feedback we need.

Notice that the MVP here does not involve building or buying drones and deploying them. This is a quicker and more cost effective way to test the value proposition, and it's true to the spirit of Agile because we can rule out the idea quickly if we learn it's not actually valuable to users without wasting the team's time by pursuing that idea further. I'll admit, not every organization has a good history with the term or concept of an MVP.

If MVP is commonly mistaken for release one, try calling it an experiment. This might help set the appropriate expectation among your stakeholders, which is that we might learn that our idea is not one worth pursuing, which is extremely valuable knowledge for the team. - Thanks for watching.

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