The MVP Playbook: Essential Tactics for Product Managers
The concept of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) has emerged as a guiding principle, steering teams towards efficient and effective strategies.
In this article, we embark on a journey to unravel the intricacies of MVP, exploring its nuances, distinguishing it from prototypes, delving into various MVP types, and dissecting the critical process of testing the riskiest assumptions. Additionally, we’ll confront the specter of bad products and how the MVP approach serves as a safeguard against launching ventures that may be doomed from the start.
What is an MVP?
A minimum viable product or an MVP is a product that contains the minimum set of features that can help you gather maximum feedback from the early users and the target market.
Let us try to understand this by breaking down the essence of an MVP:
- Minimum: it contains the minimum set of features that can help validate the product idea and assumptions.
- Viable: The product has scope for further improvements and iteration.
It is feasible for the customers and the market and can continue to thrive with further iterations.
For example, If individuals seek a convenient mode of transportation to swiftly traverse the distance between point A and point B, what would constitute a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to address this mobility challenge?
As a PM, an MVP is helpful for you when there is a lack of market validation and user data. With an MVP, you can refine the product requirements through user and market feedback. This will help you plan and perform further iterations and refinements in order to build a more robust product.
Purposes of an MVP
Specifically, MVPs will help you achieve the following critical outcomes:
MVP vs Prototype
The distinctions between an MVP and a prototype can be outlined as follows:
The Build-Measure-Learn Framework for MVP
The Build-Measure-Learn framework provides a structured approach to developing your MVPs and using them for gathering customer feedback and insights. Using these insights and feedback you can iterate or develop your product further.
The Build-Measure-Learn framework comprises three key phases. To delve into each phase, let’s explore them through the lens of a practical example — an online food ordering and delivery platform known as Swiggy:
Build:
In this phase, you build an MVP for your product and release it to the target market in order to test your assumptions.
Swiggy built a simple web page, unlike the full-fledged app it has today, it started operations within a few areas in a single city. The idea or hypothesis was to assess people’s interest in ordering food, which would be delivered to their doorsteps by any restaurant of their choice.
Measure:
In this stage, you track key product metrics once the MVP is released in the target market and is used by your users.
Swiggy measured the number of orders that were placed, the number of restaurants that were interested in signing up for its services, and the number of people who were interested in signing up as delivery executives.
Learn:
Here, you analyze the data and improve your product.
Swiggy understood that people were interested in getting food delivered to their homes from their preferred restaurants. It iterated the product to create an interface that could bring restaurants, customers, and delivery executives on a single platform.
It is also possible for you to gauge whether your assumptions were right or wrong based on the inputs that you receive from customer feedback or through the metrics that you use in the measure phase.
Persevere: or Pivot:
In case your hypothesis is right, you continue developing your product (this is called persevere). If your hypothesis is wrong, then you might have to change a part of your product strategy or change it to something new (this phase is called pivoting).
Testing your riskiest assumptions
The riskiest assumptions for your MVP are those assumptions on which the core offerings of your product are hinged. These assumptions (or hypotheses) determine the desirability and performance of your MVP.
While deciding on your riskiest assumptions, you must note two important factors:
- Known unknowns: These risks can be anticipated to some extent but cannot be fully determined. They would have data to back them and need not be tested out with users.
- Unknown unknowns: What you do not know could hurt you. Therefore, these assumptions are those that are not backed by reliable data or observations. Therefore, these may not be known and would need to be tested. These pose a big threat to your product, and, eventually your business.
An effective way to understand your unknowns and knowns is by using a graph to bifurcate your assumptions based on risk and uncertainty.
Let’s take an example of the DocuSign software to determine the riskiest assumptions:
- Would customers prefer the experience of filling out details in forms, which (the forms that customers fill) would then auto-fill the customer’s details in the documents? (This would be a known unknown, DocuSign provides electronic agreements management and e-signing. Therefore, it helps save time by automating signatures and more. So, you as a PM can expect that people who have used this service would know that the process of automating the filling of details from forms to documents might be a good idea, as it saves more time).
- Would adding this feature prove to be an improvement to the existing process? (This could be an unknown, as there is not enough understanding about this problem to anticipate its outcome).
There would be plenty of other assumptions as well. But without customers wanting this feature and without it proving to be more effective than the current process, there would be no further interest in this feature. Therefore, these assumptions will be the riskiest assumptions for the product.
Try and understand the assumptions that are not backed by data. These would be ideally your riskiest assumptions.
Types of MVPs
Broadly, the types of MVPs are as follows:
- Throwaway MVPs:
This MVP is created to test and validate only basic customer interests and is built with minimal effort. A throwaway MVP is usually not iterated on. It is either discarded altogether or replaced with a more stable version of the product.
Based on where and when you use a throwaway MVP, and what you intend to do with it, there are five distinct types of throwaway MVPs.
- Landing Page: A Landing page is used to redirect people to your website. It contains a simple web page that provides basic information about the product and a call-to-action (like a sign-up form or joining an email list). Landing pages also act as waitlists, where people can take part in the pre-ordering or booking process.
- Explainer Videos: This is a type of MVP that includes a simple video to explain what the product is about; based on the demand for your product and feedback, the product is developed further.
Similar to how you used landing pages to describe the essence of your MVP and product, you can also use videos to do the same. This type of MVP is known as explainer videos.
- Wizard of Oz: It defines a service that looks like a properly constructed real-life product, but the services are provided manually behind the scenes.
A product can be automated at the frontend to give it the appearance of being online. However, in such cases, manual intervention would be required at the backend to provide the services. Therefore a ‘Wizard of Oz’ MVP is one that has the appearance of a real-life product but, in reality, requires the services to be provided manually at the backend.
- Concierge MVP: is similar to the ‘Wizard Of Oz’ MVP, the only distinction is that the manual work being done (at the backend) is evident at Concierge MVP.
An example of a great concierge MVP is Airbnb.
When the Airbnb founders wanted to validate their idea quickly, they created a makeshift website. They then put their living room as the first (and, at the time, only) listing.
There was no fancy backend involved. When people booked, the founders themselves replied manually.
But it was enough to verify that Airbnb had tremendous market potential. And they achieved it with nearly zero cost — their only big investment was their effort.
- Fake Door: A ‘Fake Door’ MVP as the name suggests, implies the creation of an MVP that depicts the highlights of a product that is not yet created. This might sound like trickery, but the idea behind this is to simply observe customer interest (like all other types of throwaway MVPs).
Landing pages and explainer videos are possible cases of fake door MVPs. It is generally not advisable to create a fake door MVP, as this could lead to bad customer sentiment towards your potential product.
2. Iterative MVPs:
Based on the user interest and the feedback you get on the MVP, you can develop your product to make it full-fledged and desirable. This is the intent behind creating an iterative MVP. An Iterative MVP helps you continue building your product based on customer feedback.
An iterative MVP is developed only after customer interest in your product is verified. It involves keeping the most basic elements and then iterating and tweaking your product further based on information about what suits your users and what does not.
An iterative MVP keeps your product and process simple and reduces product development costs. It also ensures that you are creating a product that is close to what your users envision it to be rather than what you envisioned it to be.
Popular companies such as Airbnb, Instagram, Netflix, and Uber have gained prominence because of their ability to constantly iterate on their products. They added features that users deemed necessary and removed those that were unnecessary by analyzing the usage of their products by customers.
The MVP iteration process is incremental and involves two major stages: Alpha and Beta.
The differences between the Alpha and Beta stages are given below:
Measuring your MVP helps you constantly learn about your product which evolves with the constant evolution of your product idea and customer preferences. Contrary to what you did with a throwaway MVP, in the context of an iterative MVP, you are planning to iterate your MVP into a full-fledged product. Therefore, for an iterative MVP, your iterations can be made in a better manner if you measure your MVP performance properly.
While measuring your MVP and its performance, you typically measure three parameters:
Plussing
Adding elements of delight to a product is something that often attracts customers to your product. These could be additional features that make a product convenient to use, attractive features such as the fingerprint unlock in phones, or simply getting extra products for free with a product you purchase.
The method of plussing involves adding elements of delight or anything ( to your product) that will boost customer satisfaction. But it is advisable only when the idea behind your MVP is clear and when you can iterate on the product based on verified customer interest.
The history of plussing can be traced back to Disney, whose founder Walt Disney focussed on adding delightful elements to Disney’s offerings, such as fireworks in the evening when people are leaving Disney World. Despite being a gamble, it paid off, it added to the already great customer experience at Disney’s theme park.
Remember that it is better to go for plussing your product with delightful elements only after the basic elements and hypothesis of your product are clear, strong, and tested. Otherwise, your product could land more on the side of Google Glass rather than Disney.
Bad Product vs MVP
The key difference between an MVP and a bad product is as follows:
- An MVP is designed to enter the market early and quickly to help the company learn more about customer preferences, needs, and problems.
- A bad product is simply built in haste or with little (or unplanned) effort. It is made just to enter the market, with the belief that users will like the idea. This belief is not adequately tested.
Some of the points that you can keep in mind to avoid falling into the trap of building a bad product in the name of MVP are:
- Have clear assumptions and ideations about your product
- Be clear on the type of MVP to be developed
- Learn from user feedback and iterate accordingly
- Be prepared to analyze
- Set the metrics to measure MVP performance
User feedback is the key driver of product development. In this regard, an MVP gives you the flexibility to replace your product idea or iterate on it based on feedback on your incremental developments. A bad product simply leads to losses and wastage of time and other resources, and it is difficult to start from scratch all over again.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the journey from idea to market-ready product is a complex and iterative process, and the MVP serves as a compass, guiding us through uncertainty and facilitating informed decision-making. As we continue to refine our products through the Build-Measure-Learn framework, embracing the dynamic interplay of creation, assessment, and evolution, we pave the way for innovation that not only meets but exceeds user expectations. The path forward lies in recognizing the power of iteration, embracing the flexibility to pivot when necessary, and above all, staying committed to delivering meaningful value to the end-users.
I hope you’re now equipped with the knowledge you need to learn more about product management.
If you have any thoughts, comments, or questions, feel free to comment below send me an email, or connect with me on LinkedIn.
