Minimum viable product

In product development, the Minimum Viable Product or MVP is a strategy used for fast and quantitative market testing of a product or product feature, popularized by Eric Ries for web applications.

Description

A Minimum Viable Product has just those features (and no more) that allows the product to be deployed. The product is typically deployed to a subset of possible customers, such as early adopters that are thought to be more forgiving, more likely to give feedback, and able to grasp a product vision from an early prototype or marketing information. [1]

Definition: "the minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort" [2]

The MVP is an iterative process of idea generation, prototyping, presentation, data collection, and analysis. The process is iterated until a desirable product-market fit is obtained, or until the product is deemed to be non-viable.

Scale

A Minimum Viable Product may be an entire product or a sub-set of product (such as a feature).

• Product: The canonical MVP strategy for a web application is to crate a mock website for the product and purchase online advertising to direct traffic to the site. The mock website may consist of a marketing landing page with a link for more information or purchase. The link is not connected to a purchasing system, instead clicks are recoded and measure customer interest in the product.
• Feature: A link to a new feature in a web application may be provided in a prominent location. The feature is not implemented, rather an apology, mock-up, or marketing page is provided. Clicks of the link are recorded and provide an indication as to the demand in the customer base for the feature.

Differentiation

Releasing and assessing the impact of a minimum viable product is a market testing strategy that is used to screen product ideas soon after their generation. It is facilitated by Rapid Application Development tools and languages common to web application development.

The MVP differs from the conventional market testing strategy of investing time and money early to implement a product before testing it in the market. The MVP is intended to ensure that the market wants the product before a large time and monetary investment is made. The MVP differs from the open source methodology of release early, release often that listens to users, letting them define the the features and future of the product. The MVP starts with a product vision, which is maintained throughout the product life cycle, although is adapted based on the explicit and implicit (indirect measures) feedback from potential future customers of the product.

The MVP is a strategy that may be used as a part of Steven Blank's customer development methodology that focuses on continual product iteration and refinement based on customer feedback. Additionally, the presentation of non-existing products and features may be refined using web-based statistical hypothesis testing, such as A/B testing.

The general method of deploy first, code later is akin to the agile program code testing methodology called Test-driven development where unit tests are written before and fail until the code is written.

See also

• The Cathedral and the Bazaar
• Startup company
• Customer Development
• Steven Gary Blank

External links

• Venture Hacks interview: "What is the minimum viable product?", Lessons Learned, Eric Ries, March 23 2009
• What is the minimum viable product?, Venture Hacks: Advice for entrepreneurs, March 23 2009
• Minimum Viable Product: a guide, Lessons Learned, Eric Ries, August 3 2009