The Minimum Viable Product – the MVP of product development

Published on 13 September 2024 - Revised on

Modern incarnations of the minimum viable product are generally attributed to Agile approaches to product development, or so it seems. However, the prioritization of a project scope has been around for longer than the Agile movement, albeit this scope prioritization technique has been often neglected and severely so at times.

A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a development technique in which a new product or service is launched with just enough features to satisfy early adopters and provide feedback for future development. The goal of an MVP is to test and validate the core assumptions behind a product idea with minimal resources and time.

Here’s a breakdown of what makes an MVP

Time to market is important for product success. Getting a product to market quickly and containing the content the customer believes is of most value. Holding up time to market and delivery of the most valued feature – at the expense of features of unknown value is not going to lead to consistent success. All our team recognizes the pressures of time to market, and we would not want to cut corners on important actions, such as product verification and test, to deliver to market. It is far better to tightly consider the scope focused on the value proposition. We cover this in our latest book.

Core Functionality

MVP includes only the essential features needed to solve a core problem or fulfill a primary need. This helps in focusing on the value proposition without the distraction of extra features.

The concept of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) revolves around delivering the most basic version of a product (the most important) that is sufficient to solve a core problem or meet a primary need. At its core, MVP is about identifying and focusing on the essential features that address the fundamental issues faced by users, without adding any superfluous functionalities. This approach helps in distilling the product down to its most critical components, ensuring that the development process remains streamlined and efficient.

By concentrating on core functionality, an MVP allows developers to prioritize value over complexity. This means that resources—whether time, money, or effort—are directed toward perfecting the features that are most important to the user. The goal is to provide a working solution that offers a clear value proposition, making it easier to test and validate the product's viability in the market. This focus also helps in reducing the risk of overcomplicating the product with features that might not be immediately necessary or appreciated by early adopters.

Moreover, an MVP strategy encourages rapid iteration and feedback. By launching with only the essential features, businesses can gather real-world insights from users and use this feedback to refine and enhance the product. This iterative process allows for adjustments based on actual user needs and behaviors, rather than theoretical assumptions. In turn, this leads to a more user-centric product that evolves in alignment with market demands, ultimately increasing its chances of success.

Story

One of us worked at a company when a request came in from marketing for a new set of features, a long list of features, when the engineering departments were already quite busy. The managers expressed reservations about the entirety of the defined scope being accomplished within the desired time. A proposal was floated to prioritize the scope as an action to reduce the associated risk, but this was rejected by the lead manager. This prioritization on the most valuable features of the product is fundamental to product development and the MVP. Risking the features the customer desires at the expense of the features that are of less value to the customer is not smart.

In summary, the essence of MVP core functionality lies in its ability to strip away the non-essential and focus on delivering a solution that effectively addresses the primary needs of users. This streamlined approach not only facilitates faster development and deployment but also paves the way for meaningful user feedback, driving continuous improvement and aligning the product more closely with market expectations.

Early Feedback

By releasing the MVP to early adopters or a specific user group, you gather valuable feedback on what works and what doesn’t. This feedback is crucial for making informed decisions about future improvements.

Releasing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to early adopters or a targeted user group provides a strategic advantage by enabling the collection of valuable feedback on the product’s core functionality. Early adopters are often more willing to experiment with new solutions and provide candid insights into their experiences. By engaging this group, companies can identify what aspects of the MVP resonate well with users and which elements may fall short. This early feedback is crucial for understanding user needs and preferences, allowing for a more informed approach to subsequent product development.

The feedback gathered from early users helps in refining the product by highlighting strengths and uncovering weaknesses that may not have been evident during initial development. This iterative process ensures that future improvements are based on actual user experiences rather than hypothetical scenarios. By making data-driven adjustments, companies can enhance the product's value proposition and increase its chances of success in the broader market. Overall, leveraging early feedback from an MVP allows for a more responsive and user-centered approach to product development, ultimately leading to a more refined and effective final product.

Iterative Development

Based on the feedback, you iteratively enhance the product, adding features, fixing issues, and refining the user experience.

Iterative development is fundamental to product development, and a key aspect of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach, driven by the feedback gathered from early users. Once the MVP is released, developers use insights from this feedback to guide ongoing enhancements. This iterative process involves systematically refining the product by addressing issues, incorporating new features, and improving the overall user experience based on real-world usage and user input. The goal is to make incremental improvements that align with user needs and preferences, rather than making sweeping changes based on assumptions or incomplete information.

Through iterative development, the product evolves in a responsive and agile manner. Each cycle of feedback and refinement helps in validating assumptions, testing new features, and addressing any shortcomings that users have identified. This continuous loop of feedback and enhancement not only helps in creating a more user-centric product but also minimizes the risk of investing in features that may not deliver value. By focusing on iterative improvements, companies can adapt quickly to user needs and market trends, ensuring that the product remains relevant and competitive over time.

Cost Efficiency

By investing in a basic version of the product, you minimize risk and manage resources more effectively, avoiding the pitfalls of overbuilding before validating the market need. A dollar brought in today is more valuable than a dollar brought in a year from now.

Investing in a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) allows companies to achieve cost efficiency by focusing on a basic version of the product that addresses core user needs. Complexity adds to the product and project risk. This approach minimizes financial risk by avoiding the large upfront investments associated with developing a fully featured product before market validation. By starting with a streamlined version, companies can allocate resources more effectively, ensuring that funds are spent on essential features and critical functionalities rather than on elaborate, potentially unnecessary additions. This not only reduces the initial expenditure but also helps in preventing the financial strain that can come from overbuilding a product that might not meet market demand.

Furthermore, an MVP strategy enables better resource management by allowing companies to gauge the viability of their product concept with minimal investment. Early validation through the MVP helps identify which aspects of the product are worth further development and which should be reconsidered or discarded. This iterative approach ensures that subsequent investments are more targeted and informed, based on actual user feedback and market response. By managing resources judiciously and focusing on cost-effective development, businesses can navigate the uncertainties of market entry more efficiently and with a clearer understanding of where to direct their efforts for maximum impact.

Tooling

There are some things that can confound our MVP work, most notably mechanical tooling costs for the product. For sophisticated products hard tooling can be expensive and have long lead times for development for even the most rudimentary molds. It would not be a shock for a high volume, hard tooled mold to take up to 12 months. Fortunately, we can use soft tools for smaller volumes as we learn what the product needs to do and how it looks.

MVP is not just for Agile, but for success

In conclusion, the concept of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) plays a crucial role in startup environments and agile development by ensuring that the product development process is closely aligned with real user needs and market demand. By focusing on essential features and leveraging early feedback, an MVP allows for cost-efficient development, minimizes financial risk, and enables iterative refinement based on actual user experiences. This approach not only helps in validating the product concept before making significant investments but also fosters a more agile and responsive development process. Ultimately, the MVP methodology supports the creation of a product that is both relevant and effective, increasing the likelihood of success in a competitive market.

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Jon M. Quigley & Steve Lauck

Steve Lauck is a retired Management Consultant who helped businesses solve project management problems ultimately improving project delivery.

Full biography

Jon M. Quigley PMP CTFL is a principal and founding member of Value Transformation, a product development training (from idea to product retirement) and cost improvement organization established in 2009. Jon has an Engineering Degree from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and two master’s Degrees from City University of Seattle. Jon has thirty years of product development and manufacturing experience, ranging from embedded hardware and software through verification and project management.

Jon has won awards such as the Volvo-3P Technical Award in 2005 going on to win the 2006 Volvo Technology Award. Jon has secured seven US patents and several international patents. These patents range from human machine interfaces to telemetry systems and driver’s aides. Jon is on the Western Carolina University Master of Project Management Advisory Board as well as Forsyth Technical Community College Advisory Board. He has also been a guest lecturer on Project Management at Wake Forest University's Charlotte NC campus as well as Eindhoven Technical University (Holland) as well as an expert resource to a Configuration Management conference sponsored by the university to the local high-tech businesses.

Jon is an experienced teacher, having taught classes on a variety of product development and manufacturing at universities, as well as at technical schools and businesses (including SAE Risk Management throughout the development cycle classes). Additionally, he teaches PMP (project management professional) and CTFL (software testing certification) preparation classes. He teaches, coaches and consults on many product development, product and process management, and project management topics. Jon is an expert at ITMPI (IT Metrics and Productivity Institute) and is of the Pm2Go experts (The Standish Group), as well as a recurring contributor to the Software Process and Measurement cast (SPaMcast – podcast with Tom Cagley).

Jon has authored or contributed to more than 15 books on a range of product development and project management topics. His books are used in master level classes at universities across the globe, including the Eindhoven Technical University, Manchester Metropolitan University, San Beda College Manilla in the Philippines, and Technical Monterey University.

Jon has membership in SAE, AIAG and PMI (holding Project Management Professional Certification) and has spoken at numerous PMI events throughout North Carolina and Virginia. Jon also has the CTFL certification from ISTQB.

He has also given numerous presentations at product development conferences on a variety of aspects of product development including testing, agile and project management. He has also been interviewed by numerous business and project magazines as well as podcasts on a host of project and product development topics. Jon enjoys the beauty of nature, hiking in the woods and plays the bass. Jon lives in Lexington North Carolina with his wife Nancy, and son Jackson.