What Is a Minimum Viable Product?

A minimum viable product (MVP) is a version of your product that may not be fully complete, but it is functional enough for users to test and provide feedback. Its purpose is to determine if a market exists for your idea and if it effectively solves a problem for your customers. An MVP serves as a crucial starting point for Agile projects, which emphasize continuous feedback and iterative improvement by adding new features and refining existing ones to a current product. 

Developing an MVP helps you bring something to market faster, reach out to early adopters for feedback, and design your product around the needs of the target market. This can, in turn, help eliminate waste by leaning into ideas that resonate with early users and abandoning ideas that won’t work. 

One example of a minimum viable product is the origin story of the retail giant Amazon, which Jeff Bezos founded in 1994 out of his rented garage. Bezos created a beta version of the website, which sold only books, and asked 300 friends and colleagues to test the site. After receiving positive feedback, he launched the site in 46 countries with zero spend on marketing. Over time, he used the profit that he earned to expand his operations to sell multiple products and services, growing into a multi-billion dollar company. 

How to define your minimum viable product 

1. Research your customer. Create personas for your target audience. This will help you focus on what problems one person might have to gain insight into potential solutions.

2. Think about how your product solves their problems. Using your customer personas, think about their specific pain points and determine how your product can meet their needs. 

3. Make a needs list and a wish list. When determining the most basic solution, you may have ideas for extra features. Take note of them, but remember to include only the features customers need in the MVP. 

4. Map task flow. Create a visual list of steps the customer will need to take to use your product. This will help you ensure that you include every required task and account for every piece. 

5. Release and gather feedback. Release your product to early adopters. This is not the same thing as launching your product. This is an experiment to see how people react to your MVP. 

6. Repeat. In an Agile framework, you repeat the cycle by improving on your MVP based on user feedback and continuing through the steps. 

Read more: 12 Project Management Methodologies: Your Guide

4 core characteristics of a good minimum viable product

1. Value. Does it solve a real problem for your target users? An MVP should deliver enough benefit to convince users it's worth their time and attention. This means focusing on the core functionality that addresses a user's pain point.

2. Usability. Is it easy for users to understand and use? Your MVP should be intuitive and user-friendly. People shouldn't get lost or frustrated trying to figure out how it works.

3. Feasibility. Can you build it with your available resources? An MVP should be achievable within a reasonable timeframe and budget. It's not necessary to build every feature perfectly; focus on getting something out there quickly to gather feedback.

4. Feedback. Implement ways to gather user feedback effectively, such as surveys, analytics, or direct user testing. Use the feedback to make informed decisions about improvements and additional features, allowing for a user-driven development process.

Related terms

• Agile

• Continuous improvement

• Product management

• Scope creep

Read more: What Is Product Lifecycle? 4 Stages + How to Manage Them

Start building your next MVP

An MVP, or minimum viable product, is a pared-down version of your product designed to gather user feedback early and validate your product idea. This feedback loop allows for faster product development and reduces wasted resources by focusing on features that resonate with real users. By following steps like user research and task flow mapping, you can create an MVP that kickstarts the Agile development cycle of continuous improvement.

Learn more about MVPs and the Agile project management framework from industry experts at Google with the Google Project Management: Professional Certificate on Coursera. Build job-ready skills like strategic thinking, change management, project management, stakeholder management, task estimation, and more, all at your own pace.