Skip to main content

Minimum Viable Product

When we create a new product, Product managers always grapple with the problem of when to take the product for customer validation.

Taking it too soon would be the prospects are not interested in what is being demonstrated. Taking it too late means that we could be grossly wrong and any feedback that comes could not be that valuable.

Another problem is taking it to all the prospects might lead to unsatisfactory  comments on how the product is still not complete.

How do we manage thing timing issue?

A simple concept of minimum viable product could help us understand when is the right time to start the demonstrations.

Minimum viable product is the core product that satisfies the needs of a chosen subset of the target audience. It has just enough for us to focus on a subset of prospects, validate understanding and move on.

What it is not

MVP is often misunderstood as a the bare minimum of a product that can be developed. This understanding is incorrect.

The emphasis is on viable and not on minimum.

The approach of MVP is to make sure we target smaller groups, validate our product and keep adding to it as we keep moving.

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.

Hope this helps.

For more reading , check out The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Apple Watch - Managing "Out of stock"

Apple is credited for a lot of things - the least of which is managing retail operations. However, that seems to be a key element of product launches with apple these days.

From Idea to reality - The progress of an Idea

 I have been thinking of writing a simple app for locating trash cans at Chennai. The first thing anyone would do was to see if the idea has been already implemented. Sure enough, it has been. This is the app - Check it out. http://trashithere.herokuapp.com/ When I tried using the app, I found out that there were only few trash cans. This was a crowd sourced application. I guess this app was not used much. The Spark This led me to questioning myself - What problem led me to this application. I yearned to live in a place that was clean. My assumption was that if people found places to throw thrash, they would not litter. Going ahead with your idea

Principles for developing systems that are anti-fragile

I have been trying to make sense of what anti-fragility means and how do I use that in my day job. As a Business Principal, I tend to work with the abstract but orchestrate a program of work that needs details. This makes my job a little difficult in the terms of designing for more self-preserving systems that preserve the spirit of the abstracted strategy or vision. I came across an article from Daniel Russo on anti-fragility and his attempt at creating a manifesto similar to the manifesto for agile software development. For more reading on Daniel Russo, here is his profile:  http://djrusso.github.io More reading from his paper here:  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050916302290 This post is an attempt for me to understand what goes into developing a program that uses every opportunity to strengthen itself and achieve its objective - the vision.  I liked the approach of principles for developing systems that are anti-fragile. It i...