What is a Minimal Viable Product?

When it comes to a brand new project, we strongly encourage clients to identify the minimal set of features they would require to go live.

This is referred to as a Minimum Viable Product (or MVP). As opposed to coming up with every bell and whistle and trying to tackle complicated usage scenarios right off the bat (which might not even be needed and can be hard to predict), we instead focus on the bear essentials needed to get started.

This allows you to go live at minimal costs in the shortest amount of time possible.

Once you’re live, then you can get feedback from your community of users. Let them help you to understand specifically what the most important next set of features should be. This gives users more of a sense of ownership and involvement which drives more engagement (and ultimate success of your business).

The minimal viable product does need to be functional and offer solid value to your user community so it does go well beyond just a prototype. MVPs are well proven to be the best way to get something to market quickly and affordably because you’re only building the minimal features then adding additional features as they are needed.