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

Counterfiet goods and the fledgeling e-commerce market places

India has a nascent and a very active market place. With good interest, the right climate for growth and right product mix, the indian retail marketplace seems to be going places. However, there are some alarming signals that seem to be ignored for growth that have a good chance of being dangerous to all the stakeholders involved. The issue I am talking about is the sale of counterfeit goods in all the indian market places. India has not had a history of strong Intellectual property rights. This time it is getting messier. The Indian marketplace model is very interesting and suits well to a country as diverse as India. The market place model floated by all the major e-railers suits the fact that the seller and the buyer can be connected for serving the needs for every day goods that are not necessarily covered by IP laws. India needs more effective IP laws since it is struggling with some products like traditional indian products that cannot be covered by IP versus modern produc...

Organizational growth and turn over

Organisations need to grow. However, they should not grow for the sake of growth. That would be a virus. Orgs should not grow to survive as well. Orgs should grow with a purpose.

The enterprise agile

Consumer Vs Enterprise Every time there is a consumer use product, we see that the enterprise comes up with a very customized version so that the enterprise does not have to adapt. This is with good reason. Enterprise is an entity that is too complex and having it to change would mean a disruption to the business  - something that the stakeholders are not very happy about. For example, take the iPhone and Blackberry. iPhone is a consumer centric product while Blackberry is a very enterprise centric product. However, iPhone introduced major disruptions to the way the enterprise security functions and forced enterprises to be more flexible with the way they allow employees to view email. This increased productivity since employees could view their emails at home or anywhere on the move and respond more quickly. Another example is Microsoft word Vs Google docs. The days when a simple document would have to go through multiple revisions with the whole track changes turn...