The MVP

Coined by Frank Robinson in 2001, and popularised by Eric Ries through his book Lean Startup, the MVP has become a pillar of high-performing product teams all over the world.  And yet, as a term, it's still commonly misunderstood and frequently misused, resulting in confusion.

So what is the MVP? Let's start with Eric Ries’s definition:

"That version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort."

— Eric Ries, The Lean Startup (2011)

In other words, an MVP is not the smallest product imaginable, but the fastest way to get through the Build–Measure–Learn loop with minimal effort. It is the key to using the scientific method for building products, a mechanism for validated learning, used to test hypotheses and discover what will meet customers’ needs. However, Reis also describes types of MVP that are not real products.

The Root of Confusion

In The Lean Startup, Ries describes multiple MVP types that are not real products, including: 

Concierge MVP where:

• The “product” is delivered manually

• No scalable system exists

• Learning comes before automation

Wizard of Oz MVP where:

• The front end appears automated

• Humans do the work behind the scenes

• The goal is to test demand, not build infrastructure

Landing page MVP describes using:

• Simple landing pages

• Smoke tests

• Pre-orders or sign-ups
  …to validate demand before building anything substantial.

The Dilemma

An MVP is about delivering value to customers — or at least attempting to. However, when an MVP is defined primarily as a live, return-worthy product (as in Robinson’s framing), it can unintentionally set the team on a path towards the Innovator’s Dilemma. Once real users begin to depend on that product, learning-driven change becomes costly. Insights from the MVP may indicate the need to pivot or materially alter the value proposition, but doing so risks taking value away from existing customers. The team is then forced into a familiar predicament: protect current users and constrain learning, or pursue learning and upset the very customers the MVP has just created.

Background

Robinson’s original definition defines an MVP as “…the right-sized product for your company and your customer. It is big enough to cause adoption, satisfaction and sales, but not so big as to be bloated and risky. Technically, it is the product with maximum ROI divided by risk. The MVP is determined by revenue-weighting major features across your most relevant customers, not aggregating all requests for all features from all customers.”

-  “MVP: How it Works” Oct-3-2008

Other Views

Dan Olsen's 'Lean Product Playbook' proposed the term MVP Prototype to avoid confusion and semantic wars.

Alberto Savoia calls this set of tools, practices and tests a Pretotype.  Whilst largely reinventing existing ideas and pulling together well-known practices, was partly an attempt to coin a new term to reduce confusion.

Tom Kerwin refers to them as Behavioural Probes because, as he puts it "Your success always depends on the behaviours of people and systems that are outside of your control."

The Evolution

Reis and others evolved the concept from Robinson following an abundance of findings in our industry, stripping back the MVP concept even further than Robinson's definition.  The most notable was the 2001, yes 2001... Chaos Report by The Standish Group that found that 80% of developed features were never used.

Robinson's definition is that of a larger MVP, that is essentially incremental product delivery, requiring more time/effort to create and larger investment decisions to assess product-market fit.   With Reis's definition, there is still the ability to define this minimum usable product whilst enabling more learning and adapting between his MVP and the MUP.

The MMP

A slightly less common term, but one that is often what people mean, is the MMP, the Minimum Marketable Product.  Now, the term 'Marketable' may not seem entirely appropriate, but it is intended to clearly differentiate between something of launch quality (and arguably something worth marketing), and thus available to the public, from something that is not (or maybe not) of launch quality such as a true MVP.

Related pages:

•  The Impossible Skyscraper

• A Walking Skeleton

References:

Eric Ries, The Lean Startup (2011), Chapters 5 (“Leap”) and 6 (“Test”), examples of Concierge MVPs, Wizard-of-Oz MVPs, and landing-page MVPs.

Frank Robinson, white paper "MVP: How it Works" (2001, updated 2008) is a foundational document outlining his consulting work and the "synchronous customer and product development" (SyncDev) movement.

Christensen, C. M. (1997). The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Harvard Business Review Press.