Home

Minimum Viable Product

A minimum viable product has just enough core features to effectively deploy the product, and no more. Developers typically deploy the product to a subset of possible customers—such as early adopters thought to be more forgiving, more likely to give feedback, and able to grasp a product vision from an early prototype or marketing information. This strategy targets avoiding building products that customers do not want and seeks to maximize information about the customer with the least money spent.

minimal viable product - example with boat construction and differences between prototypes

“The minimum viable product is that version of a new product a team uses to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.”[2] The definition’s use of the words maximum and minimum means it is not formulaic. It requires judgement to figure out, for any given context, what MVP makes sense. Due to this vagueness, the term MVP is commonly used, either deliberately or unwittingly, to refer to a much broader notion ranging from a rather prototype-like product to a fully-fledged and marketable product.[8]

An MVP can be part of a strategy and process directed toward making and selling a product to customers.[9] It is a core artifact in an iterative process of idea generation, prototyping, presentation, data collection, analysis and learning. One seeks to minimize the total time spent on an iteration. The process is iterated until a desirable product/market fit is obtained, or until the product is deemed non-viable.

References

Minimum Viable Product on Wikipedia


Disclaimer:

Over time, my thoughts, lessons learned, and opinions change as I get access to new data, learn something new, or am persuaded by stronger logic.

As a result, the content you are viewing is in a constant state of revision with the aim of continuous improvement. Learn more about my kaizen knowledge system.

You can view the revision history of this content on Github.