Minimal Viable Product

I have a customer with a challenge. We've been working on an application and finished our first release. The business folks looked at it and came up with a list of "must-have's" they want before going live. The IT folks are pushing back, trying to keep additional work to a minimum before going to production. They even threw out the phrase "minimal viable product" or MVP as a way say what's the least that can be done.

However, MVP isn't about doing the least amount of work and calling it done. When taken in context of Lean Startup, it's part of a process. First you build the MVP and hypothesize what you think will happen when you go live, you measure against your hypothesis, and ideally learn something that takes you to the next step.

When I work with customers used to a more traditional approach to projects, I often see resistance to the MVP approach. They think they have one chance to get what they want, so they ask for everything. If they truly thought in terms of MVP, they would be able to think about it as what do they want first, knowing they get a chance to ask for more.

In some cases, the next step may not be in the same direction. In Lean Startup, there's the idea of the pivot, making a more fundamental change in direction. Groupon started as an online activism platform and PayPal started out building security software for handheld devices (think Palm Pilots, not smart phones). There are plenty of other examples out there of companies that didn't get the results they expected and made a pivot. Lean Startup is about getting to that point as fast as you can.

For my customer, we're going to time box another round of development, make them prioritize the must-haves, and then hopefully go to production, so they can see it they are moving in the right direction. Are you ready for your next step?