
MVP Doesn't Mean Anything - ivolo
http://rein.pk/mvp-doesnt-mean-anything/
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MoosePlissken
If he hasn't already, the author should really read The Lean Startup before
criticizing the term that it popularized. In the context of the Lean Startup,
the V in MVP doesn't refer to financial viability.

"To apply the scientific method to a startup, we need to identify which
hypotheses to test. I call the riskiest elements of a startup's plan, the
parts on which everything depends, leap-of-faith assumptions."

"Once clear on these leap-of-faith assumptions, the first step is to enter the
Build phase as quickly as possible with a minimum viable product (MVP). The
MVP is that version of the product that enables a full turn of the Build-
Measure-Learn loop with a minimum amount of effort and the least amount of
development time." \- Eric Ries, The Lean Startup

An MVP is simply the smallest possible product that is capable of testing your
assumptions about the value you think you can provide to customers. An MVP
doesn't have to represent a viable business model, it only has to provide a
viable means of testing your assumptions.

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wpietri
That the term is confusing is a benefit.

It forces people to really struggle with their domain. What is viable? For
whom? How do you pick that group? What's the minimum? Can you go lower than
that? How about lower still? If you go too low, will you be getting data that
tells you what the thing left out is? It's tricky.

Is that hard? Great. It should be. It took Lewis and Clark 18 months to do a
trip I did in a few days. That my trip was fast and easy wasn't a sign they
were doing it wrong. Exploration is necessarily hard and confusing. If it
weren't, it wouldn't be exploration.

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pkrein
The problem is that "viable" confuses what the purpose of the launch is. The
purpose of the initial launch is to experiment and test a market and idea, not
necessarily to release something that is "viable" (in what sense?). If it's a
test, let's call it a test. No need for it to have a confusing label like
viable.

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siphor
To me "minimum viable product" means a product that achieves a goal with the
minimum amount of features. It doesn't necessarily have to test anything, but
usually does. Maybe its not 'viable' in a market --> if you were using it to
test its success in a market your test failed, but the minimum viable product
still did something, and was thus viable.

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jonathanjaeger
I see no problem with minimum viable product. That's exactly what Segment.io
had, a minimum viable product. The minimum amount needed to test if your
product could be viable and is worth testing out and building out further.
Seems like we're just arguing semantics here, and the definition of MVP will
change based on your goal (e.g. social network viability could be engagement
or user growth and a SaaS product could be whether someone pulls out their
credit card to pay for something).

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craigching
Other comments are arguing its a difference of semantics. I disagree, I think
it's a difference of perspective. The idea of MVP is your idea of the minimum
set of functionality that represents a product that you want to test out to
determine if you have something that's worth something to someone else.

He's coming at it from the perspective of the user's use of your idea and I
think that's not what most people think of when thinking about MVP. Certainly
I never did. If you come at it from that way, you never know you have
something until after it's been proven viable ... how is that even useful?

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ak39
"The idea of MVP is your idea of the minimum set of functionality that
represents a [complete] product that you want to test out to determine if you
have something that's worth something to someone else ... [in a completed
state]."

An MVP, an unfinished product, simply gives you a level of confidence that the
effort to complete it will reward you with resonance with your target market.

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tzakrajs
This is a difference of semantics. A significant amount of people understand
that an MVP is the bare minimum to meet the specs of your project idea without
investing significant time in maturing aspects of it that are not core to the
functionality of the project.

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TTPrograms
Exercise to the reader: Choose an idiom. Pick definitions of its individual
words such that you can formulate an argument against it.

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tzakrajs
Can you reiterate this in a more digestible way? I am not following your use
of idiom in this context. Your second instruction is also very vague.

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ak39
An MVP is a tool to test whether your idea has steam. The key idea about MVP
is to NOT spend too much time/money before validating your product's reception
with your target market.

If the tool/product you're making only takes two weeks in a near-complete
offering then MVP really doesn't apply to your lucky situation. For those
making stuff that will take months to build, the MVP (sketches, drawings, fake
buttons, etc) is a great idea.

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exelius
An MVP is a starting point. Generally an MVP is not market-viable; it's
somewhere between a tech demo and a beta product. But it's complete enough to
start having talks with potential customers / investors about where the
product should go from there. When you're just talking about a theoretical
product that doesn't exist yet, it can be hard to have a constructive
conversation with people.

No two people will probably agree what an MVP is for a specific product at
first; but it doesn't matter. I think too many companies focus on an MVP as a
stage-gate versus just planning feature priority (and revisiting as
necessary). The whole idea behind an MVP is that you don't really understand
the market, so you build a barebones product to go start to learn what you're
doing from a market positioning standpoint. Then you go develop features to
reinforce your position.

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wpietri
I have come to see an MVP as hopefully viable for a very narrow slice of the
market.

In _Crossing the Chasm_ , the author talks about readiness to adopt as a bell
curve. At the very eager end of that curve are people who will put quite a lot
of work in. For a product I'm researching now, I'm trying to find the smallest
thing I can give to a very eager customer and have it produce value for them.
Hopefully enough value that they will say, "Ooh, let me get my checkbook."

That it will take a ton more work to be viable for mainstream customers is
fine by me. If it were appealing to more than 5 or 10% of my target market,
that would tell me I could have been more minimal.

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exelius
Yeah; it shouldn't be appealing to the wider market: you don't even know what
that market is at the point you're building your MVP. The MVP is as much a
tool to help you learn about the market as it is an actual product.

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InclinedPlane
Proving that it's possible to overthink any idea no matter how sound.

~~~
eli
Look at anything long enough and it loses meaning:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_satiation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_satiation)

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chavesn
This kind of criticism happens to any popular term. And usually terms become
popular because they _work_. Thinking "minimum viable product" worked -- it
turned on the light bulb for many people (like myself) who polish instead of
test, or seek perfection instead of iteration.

I feel like Reinhardt is complaining about the term "minimum VIABLE product"
when most people emphasize it "MINIMUM viable product".

In that emphasis, the two mean almost the same thing. However, I see another
difference:

\- "viable" makes you think about what users want. Sure, you can get carried
away, but that's why " _minimum_ is there to reign you in.

\- "testable" could mean anything -- you can _test_ anything, in any direction
-- it doesn't make you think about what users want.

This is problematic.

Viable is a good word. It points you in the right direction. "Testable" helps
to limit you, but "Minimum" is already there to do it.

I say stick with MVP, but if you, or team, start getting carried away, just
remember - Minimum, minimum, minimum!

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curun1r
For me, the viable part has always referred to required aspects of the
product.

For example, a forgot password feature might require two components, the
webpage where users indicate that they've forgotten their password and the
backend that sends them an email with a reset link. Without the V in MVP, you
could implement just the webpage side of it and push it out to start learning
about user behavior. But without the backend, users will be frustrated and the
feature won't work.

However sometimes a feature that has multiple components can be rolled out
sequentially to increase the time that your users are using the feature and
you're learning how to improve it. An example might be Amazon's product
reviews. An MVP mindset could allow you to have a phase 1 that is simply
collecting reviews without displaying them anywhere. The feature may be more
compelling when all aspects implemented, but it's at least somewhat functional
in a partially implemented state.

And that's where the judgment comes in...when developing a product, you have
to distill the eventual vision of what you want to build into the minimum
thing that doesn't have holes that either make it unusable or compromise your
ability to learn from the way that user's interact with your product.

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codelap
This is the dumbest thing I've read in a long time. He's defending MVP, but
prefers the word testable to viable. Even though, viability is a primary
criteria prior to testing. If your idea is not capable of success, then there
isn't much point testing it. Lets say I have a plan for a helmet that lets you
talk to god. Is it viable, no. Is it testable, yes. Testability is useless if
you don't have viability.

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gfodor
MVP definitely means something. It means "my opinion of what we must build to
ship something."

In other words, its a meaningful definition that is absolutely meaningless. It
is a fancy term introduced to allow circular arguments when pushing for your
own pet feature: "this feature is needed for the MVP, because it's a feature
that must be there for the product to work and be tested."

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loceng
Testability is a pre-cursor to viability. You need to test, experiment, before
a product can reach MVP.

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pbreit
Just pretend viable means "capable of being successful", not "actually
successful". Oh, wait, that's what it means.

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ak39
"Viable" is a characteristic of your product such that it looks and "feels"
close to the real deal (but isn't!) in the hands of the customer. (Think
viable as "fakable")

"Minimum" is the least amount of resource it will take you to show off that
characteristic.

(I'm agreeing with you, btw. :-) )

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xivzgrev
Sure it does!

Most Valuable Player Most Verbose Parrot Most Vindictive Pariha Moose Vamoosed
Perennially (ok now I'm stretching)

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wlievens
Model-View-Presenter might be a tad more relevant.

