What is a minimum viable product (MVP)?
Definition: Minimum viable product (MVP) is a product launched to the public with enough features to attract early users and validate its idea.
Its goal is to be built and launched in a short period of time to test the idea and gather feedback which gives the team the confirmation if the MVP can be scaled into a complete product.
How is a minimum viable product (MVP) defined?
MVPs go through six defining phases:
- Identify opportunities by listening to people and spot patterns in their needs and pain points.
- Define the product's value proposition and how it solves a problem customers have.
- Define the core feature that solves that problem and can be built.
- Build a prototype and test it with a small group of users.
- Refine and improve the product based on user feedback. If needed, go through several prototypes.
- Validate the MVP by launching it to the public and seeing how the market reacts.
The goal of an MVP isn’t to be of high quality but to test if the market needs a product that solves a particular problem.
Examples of an MVP
Mindmesh started with its team identifying the problem of people having too many meetings, conversations, and documents.
The team interviewed 300 product development employees and noticed a pattern of people having too many notes and to-do lists scattered everywhere.
The team developed an idea and worked on a feature to connect notes and to-do lists and manage them better.
After a few prototypes and tests, the team expanded this feature and turned it into an MVP.
Mindmesh’s MVP feature
Mindmesh’s MVP launched with only one feature, but its users liked it and requested more features.
The market validated the MVP, and the team developed it into
