Minimum Viable Product (MVP): What Is It & What’s Its Purpose
What does it really take to get a company off the ground? Does a business need a full suite of products and services to attract investors, customers, and public attention? These are the questions that management professionals have asked for years, and why the concept of minimum viable product (MVP) began in the first place.
Minimum viable product (sometimes minimal viable product) is a recent term that outlines a phenomenon that has existed long before in product management. It has gone from a fringe concept among startups to a widely adopted idea in all industries, though every company takes a unique approach to MVP development and adoption.
We believe a great MVP can serve as a rock-solid foundation for a great company, but only with a proper understanding of an MVP and reasonable expectations. This article will cover all the key info related to the purpose of an MVP, plus what to expect in terms of development, execution, methodology, and more.
What Is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?
The term MVP, originated by management professional Frank Robinson in 2001, was expanded upon by Eric Reis in his 2011 book The Lean Startup. Between Robinson and Reis, the concept of the minimum viable product began to gather steam as prominent companies like Uber, Amazon, and Airbnb proved to make this idea a reality with tremendous results.
The idea is simple: a minimum viable product is the most basic version of a product or service that can be launched with the resources available to a company at the time. The product itself might be stripped down, lacking the bells and whistles of a full-featured version, but still has the core features and enough functionality to test market demand and see how customers respond.
An MVP isn’t a low-effort prototype or something pieced together without a product roadmap. In fact, the most successful examples showcase quite the opposite approach. To create a winning MVP, an organization must be highly coordinated, efficient, and willing to go the extra mile, all within a relatively short timeframe and usually under considerable pressure.
That said, the concept of the MVP has revolutionized the business world in the 21st century, proving that the right product at the right time and place can make an outsized impact, setting the stage for monumental success where it’s least expected. Now that we know what MVP means and how a product idea can thrive, we’ll begin to explore the purpose of an MVP and how it comes to be.
What Is the Purpose of a Minimum Viable Product?
An MVP is not built with the purpose of being the long-term play that makes a company successful in the long run. Instead, it’s used to gather feedback, utilize a lean startup methodology, and push the team to the limit in terms of timing, efficiency, and resource allocation.
In its most basic form, an MVP begins as a product vision or a basic hypothesis of what a product can be. This typically involves higher-ups coordinating with researchers, developers, and product leads to create an early iteration that can be launched relatively quickly and with limited resources.
While the occasional MVP can turn into a home run off the bat, that’s not the norm. In most cases, the MVP is something early adopters can get their hands on and see how it looks and feels. This environment is primed for quality feedback, and support teams have the important duty of presenting this feedback to the team members in charge of further iteration and improvement.
As MVPs have become more popular in Silicon Valley and beyond, the concept has become more widely adopted in larger organizations across industries — not just the lean startup tech space. Now, we see major corporations “testing the waters” of a new market or potential customer base with small yet highly targeted MVPs. These projects are led to collect feedback and learn as much as possible so the next version of the product is better than ever.
Even if the MVP falls flat, there are valuable lessons to be learned — it’s ultimately a win-win if the organization has the right approach and takes feedback in stride to make adjustments in other areas of the business.
5 Steps for Setting Up an Effective MVP
Setting up an effective MVP requires an intense development process, optimized feedback loops, and a clear delineation of roles and responsibilities throughout an organization. In other words, an MVP is a highly condensed, precise version of product development that is meant to elicit a certain response from the market.
Here are some practical steps for setting up an effective MVP, from initial brainstorming sessions to project execution and follow-up.
1. Pinpoint a Customer Need or Problem to Solve
Whether it’s a gap in the market, a growing customer need, or a new problem that has yet to be addressed, an MVP must start with this identification process from a high level. This demands a dive into market research, competitor analysis, target audiences, and general market trends shaping the contours of your MVP development.
This key first step has the dual purpose of understanding market dynamics and also outlining what needs to be included in your MVP to make it a product-market fit. A great idea is only as good as the market ready to receive it, so make this step the first priority in your MVP development, no matter what industry you’re in.
2. Define the MVP Outline and Key Features
The MVP outline will include all the findings from your initial brainstorming session but benefit from more structure and the exact features you want to include. It’s a process of narrowing down details and weeding out elements that may be too expensive or unwieldy for the first version of a product — expect to make some compromises and trade-offs to make it viable.
The goal is to turn an idea into something tangible, concrete, and workable for all stakeholders, from the development team to marketers and support staff. No matter how small the project may seem on paper, you’ll want to define terms and details as clearly as possible to avoid ambiguity and confusion when the process is underway.
There’s no doubt you’ll feel tempted to make the product more expensive or complex than it needs to be, but resist this urge to stay aligned with the true spirit of the MVP in practice. These extraneous ideas can be incorporated as new features or a version of a new product later.
3. Develop a Prototype Version of the Product or Service
A first iteration version of the product is just that — no frills, no bells or whistles, and nothing that isn’t absolutely necessary to a functional, “shippable,” marketable product. Whether it takes six weeks or a full year to develop isn’t relevant. What matters most is that you’re staying within the confines of your initial strategic plan with the allocated resources and human capital to make it happen.
Remember that MVP is far from the final version you want it to look like eventually — that will happen later once you validate the idea and test the market for adoption and feedback. Don’t put the cart before the horse here, and keep in mind the purpose of the MVP as you go through the development and rollout stages.
4. Test, Gather Feedback, and Iterate
Speaking of feedback, the MVP launch is a critical moment with a lot of hype surrounding the big day. Be sure you have a list of metrics and objectives & key results (OKRs) that are clearly communicated and understood by all team members. The last thing you want is a miscommunication or wires crossing on what metrics to track and the scorecard you’re keeping.
If you’ve followed the correct steps up to this point, you should see feedback in a relatively short timeframe, whether that’s online customer feedback, via support channels, or from industry peers on social media like LinkedIn. Make sure you record this feedback with the correct frameworks and organize it so you can act upon it for future iterations.
With every piece of feedback, good or bad, comes an opportunity to iterate and evolve the product — don’t pass on any opportunity to make these changes where you see fit. From user experience to bugs, glitches, and success stories, every piece of feedback has its place in the process.
5. Scale, Evolve, and Compete
Once you’ve taken the first round of feedback for your MVP and made a few iterations, it’s time to consider turning the MVP into a full-fledged product with scalable, long-term potential. This is your chance to go back to the drawing board and see how you can make an MVP into a superstar that drives your business forward.
This may be a reason to review target markets, competitors, and internal operations, including everything that could make or break a serious product rollout with considerable investment. Before long, your MVP will go from a small-scale experiment to a true market game changer, making your business more formidable than ever.
What Are Some Examples of MVPs?
Famous examples of MVP include Airbnb, Zappos, Amazon, and other heavy-hitters that once began as a basic, functional product with big ambitions. From Jeff Bezos selling books online to a basic rideshare system like Uber, these entrepreneurs saw an angle, tested an MVP, and did all they could to iterate based on continuous feedback and refinement.
Every journey is unique, and every lifecycle has its own quirks based on the business model, viability, and a dash of fortuitous coincidence. However, we see the same step-by-step process repeat again and again, with a great product and core value proposition at the center of it all.
The lesson here is clear: with a great business idea and the right methods to manage user feedback, the MVP approach can take a small kernel and supercharge it into something powerful. Remember that the MVP concept isn’t a matter of least effort but rather the right product team, real users, and a lovable final product with just enough features to gain traction.
Begin Your MVP Journey With Reforge
There’s more than enough evidence to support the viability of the MVP concept — now it’s time to make it work for you and your team. If you feel like developing a minimum viable product is the next best move for your organization, the best time to start is now.
Reforge features a wide array of artifacts that real companies have used to develop MVPs and map out strategic plans to gather feedback, test markets, and take their products to the next level with efficiency and focus. From mapping user journeys to incorporating feedback and scaling up, our templates are structured to fuel your MVP efforts and take your team to the next level.
Get started today with our New Product Landscape Analysis and see where the roadmap takes you.
Minimum Viable Product (MVP): What Is It & What’s Its Purpose
What does it really take to get a company off the ground? Does a business need a full suite of products and services to attract investors, customers, and public attention? These are the questions that management professionals have asked for years, and why the concept of minimum viable product (MVP) began in the first place.
Minimum viable product (sometimes minimal viable product) is a recent term that outlines a phenomenon that has existed long before in product management. It has gone from a fringe concept among startups to a widely adopted idea in all industries, though every company takes a unique approach to MVP development and adoption.
We believe a great MVP can serve as a rock-solid foundation for a great company, but only with a proper understanding of an MVP and reasonable expectations. This article will cover all the key info related to the purpose of an MVP, plus what to expect in terms of development, execution, methodology, and more.
What Is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?
The term MVP, originated by management professional Frank Robinson in 2001, was expanded upon by Eric Reis in his 2011 book The Lean Startup. Between Robinson and Reis, the concept of the minimum viable product began to gather steam as prominent companies like Uber, Amazon, and Airbnb proved to make this idea a reality with tremendous results.
The idea is simple: a minimum viable product is the most basic version of a product or service that can be launched with the resources available to a company at the time. The product itself might be stripped down, lacking the bells and whistles of a full-featured version, but still has the core features and enough functionality to test market demand and see how customers respond.
An MVP isn’t a low-effort prototype or something pieced together without a product roadmap. In fact, the most successful examples showcase quite the opposite approach. To create a winning MVP, an organization must be highly coordinated, efficient, and willing to go the extra mile, all within a relatively short timeframe and usually under considerable pressure.
That said, the concept of the MVP has revolutionized the business world in the 21st century, proving that the right product at the right time and place can make an outsized impact, setting the stage for monumental success where it’s least expected. Now that we know what MVP means and how a product idea can thrive, we’ll begin to explore the purpose of an MVP and how it comes to be.
What Is the Purpose of a Minimum Viable Product?
An MVP is not built with the purpose of being the long-term play that makes a company successful in the long run. Instead, it’s used to gather feedback, utilize a lean startup methodology, and push the team to the limit in terms of timing, efficiency, and resource allocation.
In its most basic form, an MVP begins as a product vision or a basic hypothesis of what a product can be. This typically involves higher-ups coordinating with researchers, developers, and product leads to create an early iteration that can be launched relatively quickly and with limited resources.
While the occasional MVP can turn into a home run off the bat, that’s not the norm. In most cases, the MVP is something early adopters can get their hands on and see how it looks and feels. This environment is primed for quality feedback, and support teams have the important duty of presenting this feedback to the team members in charge of further iteration and improvement.
As MVPs have become more popular in Silicon Valley and beyond, the concept has become more widely adopted in larger organizations across industries — not just the lean startup tech space. Now, we see major corporations “testing the waters” of a new market or potential customer base with small yet highly targeted MVPs. These projects are led to collect feedback and learn as much as possible so the next version of the product is better than ever.
Even if the MVP falls flat, there are valuable lessons to be learned — it’s ultimately a win-win if the organization has the right approach and takes feedback in stride to make adjustments in other areas of the business.
5 Steps for Setting Up an Effective MVP
Setting up an effective MVP requires an intense development process, optimized feedback loops, and a clear delineation of roles and responsibilities throughout an organization. In other words, an MVP is a highly condensed, precise version of product development that is meant to elicit a certain response from the market.
Here are some practical steps for setting up an effective MVP, from initial brainstorming sessions to project execution and follow-up.
1. Pinpoint a Customer Need or Problem to Solve
Whether it’s a gap in the market, a growing customer need, or a new problem that has yet to be addressed, an MVP must start with this identification process from a high level. This demands a dive into market research, competitor analysis, target audiences, and general market trends shaping the contours of your MVP development.
This key first step has the dual purpose of understanding market dynamics and also outlining what needs to be included in your MVP to make it a product-market fit. A great idea is only as good as the market ready to receive it, so make this step the first priority in your MVP development, no matter what industry you’re in.
2. Define the MVP Outline and Key Features
The MVP outline will include all the findings from your initial brainstorming session but benefit from more structure and the exact features you want to include. It’s a process of narrowing down details and weeding out elements that may be too expensive or unwieldy for the first version of a product — expect to make some compromises and trade-offs to make it viable.
The goal is to turn an idea into something tangible, concrete, and workable for all stakeholders, from the development team to marketers and support staff. No matter how small the project may seem on paper, you’ll want to define terms and details as clearly as possible to avoid ambiguity and confusion when the process is underway.
There’s no doubt you’ll feel tempted to make the product more expensive or complex than it needs to be, but resist this urge to stay aligned with the true spirit of the MVP in practice. These extraneous ideas can be incorporated as new features or a version of a new product later.
3. Develop a Prototype Version of the Product or Service
A first iteration version of the product is just that — no frills, no bells or whistles, and nothing that isn’t absolutely necessary to a functional, “shippable,” marketable product. Whether it takes six weeks or a full year to develop isn’t relevant. What matters most is that you’re staying within the confines of your initial strategic plan with the allocated resources and human capital to make it happen.
Remember that MVP is far from the final version you want it to look like eventually — that will happen later once you validate the idea and test the market for adoption and feedback. Don’t put the cart before the horse here, and keep in mind the purpose of the MVP as you go through the development and rollout stages.
4. Test, Gather Feedback, and Iterate
Speaking of feedback, the MVP launch is a critical moment with a lot of hype surrounding the big day. Be sure you have a list of metrics and objectives & key results (OKRs) that are clearly communicated and understood by all team members. The last thing you want is a miscommunication or wires crossing on what metrics to track and the scorecard you’re keeping.
If you’ve followed the correct steps up to this point, you should see feedback in a relatively short timeframe, whether that’s online customer feedback, via support channels, or from industry peers on social media like LinkedIn. Make sure you record this feedback with the correct frameworks and organize it so you can act upon it for future iterations.
With every piece of feedback, good or bad, comes an opportunity to iterate and evolve the product — don’t pass on any opportunity to make these changes where you see fit. From user experience to bugs, glitches, and success stories, every piece of feedback has its place in the process.
5. Scale, Evolve, and Compete
Once you’ve taken the first round of feedback for your MVP and made a few iterations, it’s time to consider turning the MVP into a full-fledged product with scalable, long-term potential. This is your chance to go back to the drawing board and see how you can make an MVP into a superstar that drives your business forward.
This may be a reason to review target markets, competitors, and internal operations, including everything that could make or break a serious product rollout with considerable investment. Before long, your MVP will go from a small-scale experiment to a true market game changer, making your business more formidable than ever.
What Are Some Examples of MVPs?
Famous examples of MVP include Airbnb, Zappos, Amazon, and other heavy-hitters that once began as a basic, functional product with big ambitions. From Jeff Bezos selling books online to a basic rideshare system like Uber, these entrepreneurs saw an angle, tested an MVP, and did all they could to iterate based on continuous feedback and refinement.
Every journey is unique, and every lifecycle has its own quirks based on the business model, viability, and a dash of fortuitous coincidence. However, we see the same step-by-step process repeat again and again, with a great product and core value proposition at the center of it all.
The lesson here is clear: with a great business idea and the right methods to manage user feedback, the MVP approach can take a small kernel and supercharge it into something powerful. Remember that the MVP concept isn’t a matter of least effort but rather the right product team, real users, and a lovable final product with just enough features to gain traction.
Begin Your MVP Journey With Reforge
There’s more than enough evidence to support the viability of the MVP concept — now it’s time to make it work for you and your team. If you feel like developing a minimum viable product is the next best move for your organization, the best time to start is now.
Reforge features a wide array of artifacts that real companies have used to develop MVPs and map out strategic plans to gather feedback, test markets, and take their products to the next level with efficiency and focus. From mapping user journeys to incorporating feedback and scaling up, our templates are structured to fuel your MVP efforts and take your team to the next level.
Get started today with our New Product Landscape Analysis and see where the roadmap takes you.