Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Design by Howell

These days, every new project becomes an MVP. I’ve been noticing this trend within companies adopting Agile and discovering Design Thinking.

The problem is, most of the time the MVP created is missing a fundamental part of the equation…

It isn’t actually Viable.

Minimum Viable Product != Minimum Project Scope

Minimum Viability?

The whole premise behind building an MVP is to validate a business assumption (hopefully from a customer centric approach),with viability being the key measure of success. Viability of a product is measured by its ability to make money for the business, therefore it needs to be profitable.

This doesn’t mean you have to sell your MVP or charge people for it in order to know it will be profitable, however, you need to bake your financial assumptions into the MVP – and build measures into your rollout / testing. Doing this will enable you to accurately gauge viability.

At the end of the day, this product must (at a minimum) achieve some level of viability for it to continue beyond the MVP stage. There aren’t many businesses out there pushing products that don’t make them money.

What makes a good MVP then?

How do you know when you’ve got a good MVP, and if you don’t what should you be doing instead?

A good MVP fulfils a customer need. There should be a clear start state and end state that delivers a customer benefit.

A good MVP validates a business hypothesis. You should be measuring your outcomes and assigning business value to those numbers

A good MVP should be minimal. It’s important with all this talk of validation and needs fulfilment that we keep in mind the minimum part of MVP. Keep it simple.

RAT vs MVP

I’ve seen a few articles address this by saying that the MVP should be replaced in favour of the RAT, or Riskiest Assumption Test.

Honestly, I’m not sure how you can compare the two. One is measure of business sustainability (driven by metrics), the other a hypothesis validation to mitigate business or project risk.

I like the idea of an RAT as a precursor to building an MVP if your MVP scope requires you to validate a certain hypothesis before you can properly address viability. Otherwise, they’re not at all the same thing.

MMP vs MVP

Minimum Marketable Product (MMP) is another espoused alternative mindset for lean product development. In this instance you are looking to create the minimal product that can be actively marketed to customers.

I find this to be an interesting distinction, in that I don’t really see the point of it. If you can’t market your MVP, then you haven’t researched your market enough and probably built something with the hope that an audience would come to you?

If your MVP is not also an MMP, then you shouldn’t be building yet because you don’t understand your customer well enough.

Startups and MVPs

Within the startup world the term MVP is often used when talking about the first product you produce to test. This, I think, is where a lot of the problem comes from. If you are still in your testing phase, you aren’t building an MVP – you’re building a prototype for user testing or research.

Your startup MVP is the one that makes revenue, that’s what makes it viable. In the dev world it’s your 1.0 release when you go to market and start bringing real live customers on board.

Final thoughts

Now I know this is all terminology and semantics, however, these terms set expectations that drive very important conversations for businesses and customers.

If you release an RAT as an MVP you will put customers off and affect your growth. If your startups MVP isn’t making any money then investors aren’t likely to come to the table with funding for your next phase. If your projects MVP isn’t able to drive revenue then your project will not progress.

Finding the right balance for your MVP is a task that requires a decent amount of thought. It’s the first measure of your products capability to succeed in the marketplace.

Make sure you are setting yourself up with a clearer view of whether to progress, or pivot.

Your MVP isn’t viable it’s just minimal… was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Your MVP isn’t viable it’s just minimal…

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