A Beginner’s Guide to MVP

06. September 2016

What is an MVP? Why is it important for your business? In our beginner’s guide to MVPs our Head of Product, Gregor Ilg, explains what a minimum viable product is, how it is developed and how it can help companies to enhance innovation.

Introduction

When you join a roadmap meeting and you hear people talking about the “MVP”, you better make sure they are actually talking basketball before you throw in your favorite Michael Jordan story.

There is no shortage of buzzwords in business, and executives are constantly inundated with jargon – especially when it comes to Digital Transformation. However, digital is also one area where savvy executives know they need to show strength – and at etventure, we specialize in helping CEOs add digital to their playbook. Since we receive a lot of questions from CEOs about “MVPs”, I’ve put together a quick overview for you. I’ve worked to keep it brief, yet provide the essentials you’ll need to keep your teams driven – and focused.

What does MVP mean?

“MVP” is an acronym for “minimum viable product”. The term has its origins in Silicon Valley, where technology companies battle to find ways to innovate faster – and gain competitive advantage. During the last couple of years the MVP has become the holy grail of agile product development – but there are still a variety of different interpretations about what “MVP” really means.

So, what is a minimum viable product, and how do you go about creating one?

The MVP Process

The most common definition (as popularized by Eric Ries) describes the MVP as “a version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers – with the least effort”.

For many executives and their teams, the MVP process can be counter-intuitive. This is particularly true in industries that are highly regulated, where teams are used to taking a lot of time and care when implementing new ideas. The MVP process is built on a set of somewhat radical core principles, all designed to get ideas implemented quickly:

  • Don’t aim for perfection, aim for progress!
  • Testing for the right thing is critical!
  • Don’t think in features, think in benefits!
  • Keep the product idea in mind, but only plan for the next step!
  • Success is not only measured in revenue gained, but also in costs saved!

As odd as they may seem, as the executive it is critical to keep your team focused on these principles. Speed can make the difference between success and failure – but only if you run in the right direction. So you better make sure your compass is calibrated.

Understanding MVP Development 

The Challenges of Waterfall vs. Agile:

Many companies have a careful method of product development – that is deeply embedded in their culture. This step-by-step approach is known as “the Waterfall method”. With an MVP, instead of asking your team to spend weeks or months writing a detailed specification, you need to ask your team to start with a vague goal in mind – and then “sprint” from “pit stop” to “pit stop” to gather customer feedback as quickly as possible. This approach is known as “Agile”.

So, why do this?

The exercise of building an MVP isn’t about creating a perfect, finished product. Instead, building an MVP is about validating an idea. By keeping the process lean and fast, you are minimizing your financial risk, and give yourself the opportunity to try out more ideas, identify winners early, and quickly discard ideas which won’t produce positive results.

Hypothesis-based Iterations

So the obvious next question is – how do you do this? First, you need to ensure that your team has identified a positive outcome they expect for each MVP – a hypothesis. For example, your team might assume that taking an Excel-based process online will increase efficiency – and therefore cut your costs and increase sales.

  • To validate this hypothesis, you build an MVP.
  • Then you test the MVP with real users.
  • In your tests, you may find that users are not using the MVP as you expected.
  • If so, you adapt – and do another sprint to improve the MVP.

This build-measure-learn-repeat cycle is what MVPs are all about. If you follow this approach, you’ll significantly increase your chance of finding the right direction – or pivot if not.

Conclusion

MVPs are a great way to quickly test out your ideas, and drive innovation within your business. But in our extensive experience, it also takes top-down leadership and trust from the CEO to truly benefit from the MVP process. Especially with a very vague long term goal in mind, the product team needs to be trusted to make the right decisions along the road without knowing beforehand how to get there.

Sometimes even with CEO leadership, your best people are not able to adapt to the entrepreneurial mindset needed to make MVP development work. If this is your situation, find yourself a great partner to help you build a digital culture.

Regardless of your capabilities, you should be prioritizing innovation on your near term roadmap – to ensure your business is well-positioned for the future.

 

About the author:

Gregor Ilg

Gregor Ilg leads the product team at etventure. Under his guidance, the team has delivered hundreds of MVPs for clients – across a range of industries.

 

 


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Kornelia Gilmour 29. September 2021 · 12:48

Great article! We often bite off more than we can chew ) To avoad it we should understand that mistakes are inevitable. Here you can read about some of them sloboda-studio.com/blog/…e-product/

Reply

Andrew 21. September 2021 · 20:08

Actually, I never worked with MVP, but it’s interesting for me to try this sphere. I know a lot about messaging app development, you can check this post madappgang.com/blog/…res-costs/ to clarify Whatsapp technology. Possibly you would like to build this type of apps.

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jakc 30. July 2021 · 18:16

I didn’t have any expectations concerning that title, but the more I was astonished. The author did a great job. I spent a few minutes reading and checking the facts. Everything is very clear and understandable. I like posts that fill in your knowledge gaps. This one is of the sort.

Reply

Dwarakesh 19. July 2021 · 19:00

MVP is one of the major sources in the business market and plays a major role in dominating the business trends based on the specified features. Each product and service has a unique product to showcase and highlight the product trends in the market. In the Streaming Market, there’s a lot of platform provider in the market with unique MVP. Here I’ll share with you the complete guide to creating an OTT app with unique selling for your streaming business. Learn how Ref: blog.vplayed.com/ott-a…velopment/

Reply

Tom Harris 1. April 2021 · 13:50

Very useful article! Thank you!
When you plan to develop MVP, you try to know its development cost inadvance. First of all, MVP pricing depends on whether the company is onshore, offshore, or nearshore.
Here you can find how will the cost be formed and what will be the final price – itechcraft.com/servi…ld-an-mvp/ .

Reply

Melissa 23. February 2021 · 13:21

Nice article!
Did you know that nearly 70% of startups fail? There are many reasons for this, from disharmony in the development team to a lack of product-market fit. And what’s more, there’s rarely a single reason why a startup fails.
Here you can find additional info in this article – steelkiwi.com/blog/…necessary/

Reply

Entony Green 30. October 2020 · 11:58

The majority of startups collapse because the market doesn’t need them. To understand what customers need from your product, you should develop a minimum viable product. MVP costs less than a full-fledged solution and allows you to study the situation on the market. This approach got companies like Amazon and Dropbox all the way to where they are now. You can check this article about similar topic: www.cleveroad.com/blog/mvp-creation

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Frank 26. November 2019 · 11:37

This is a useful article. The Way of writing is good. By reading this, I surely can enrich my knowledge. Your idea is really outstanding. Thank’s to share such an important thing.

Reply

Andy Smith 13. May 2021 · 8:04

IoT is perhaps the most energizing developments lately. It will affect for our entire lives and alter the manner in which we interface with the world. IoT hacking is developing since producers are selling modest associated gadgets into the market without cautious online protection contemplations. More you can read here computools.com/iot-s…velopment/

Autor

Gregor Ilg ist bei etventure als Experte für Organisationsdesign und -entwicklung verantwortlich für alle Themen rund um die neue Arbeitswelt. Gemeinsam mit seinem Team entwickelt und betreut er sowohl die kontinuierlichen Transformationsprozesse innerhalb von etventure als auch das projektbasierte Change Management für Kunden verschiedener Branchen.

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