A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product that has been minimally developed but still meets the requirements of the market. An MVP is used to test out ideas quickly and cheaply before investing a lot of time and resources into developing something bigger. A MVP is a concept from agile scrum that refers to a product that has just enough features to satisfy the needs of early customers and, more importantly, give them something to provide feedback on to shape the future of the product. Instead of jumping the gun and creating all the features you think users want in a single iteration (a process that’s lengthy and prone to errors), you do it in “sprints” or stages and you learn as you go.
Let’s use a manufacturing example. If your customer asks you to design and build a car, what can you do to shorten the development process?
First off, start by asking what they need. As in what they REALLY need. Why do they want the car? They need transportation, right?
According to the agile/scrum methodology your MVP should be the first product that satisfies the transportation need. In this case, that could be a bike. It’s not fast, and it’s not ideal, but it starts to take care of the problem.
Next, as you identify pedalling as the users’ main frustration with the bike, you can upgrade it to a motorcycle. And, as you keep learning about transportation means, you can finally build the car—maybe starting with a Honda and working your way up.
The advantages of starting with MVPs via the agile approach include:
Speed to Launch: A bike takes much less time to design and build.
Flexibility: While you work toward the final product, the client has something to use and test.
Better Products: As you keep working on your final product, you learn more about your client’s expectations in real-time, so you reduce the chances of building something that no one wants.
There's no standard definition of an MVP, but some common features MVPs share include:
A focus on the core functionality that is necessary to deliver value to the user
A minimum feature set—just enough to get the job done
A simplified design that is easy to use and understand
A quick turnaround time so the product can be released and feedback can be gathered as soon as possible.
The core purpose of a minimum viable product is to gather information from the user and reduces risk. To find out if people will actually buy and how they will actually use it if it's a real thing.