BYOMSPM

Instead of a Design post, I decided to make this into an emergency Product post on MVPs because I’ve recently been tasked with defining one at my job.

Grade I gave myself for this assignment: 90/100

Basic Goal of an MVP:

Getting the max amount of learning about customers with the least possible effort.

Reasons you might want to build an MVP:

• Releasing a product to market more quickly
• Testing or validating an idea with users without full investment (delivering only core functionality or functionality using piecemeal 3rd-party tools to gather user feedback to inform future enhancements)
• Learning what resonates with a target market (are they willing to pay for my product, how much are they willing to pay, which features do they actually use)

From everything I read, it seems like the best way to approach defining an MVP is to ask yourself a series of questions that help illuminate critical aspects of a product and guide you to a set of indispensable features. I found a few different sets of questions that you can use for this:

Question List #1 for Defining an MVP

This list of questions to ask and answer in order to define an MVP comes from the podcast episode “How to Build an MVP by Amazon Sr PM” on The Product Podcast. One thing I’ll note about this set of questions is that it seems less relevant to a product for internal customers (like the one I’m working on) and more targeted towards newer, external products.

1. What is the core problem and value proposition of your solution?
2. What is your target market?
3. What is the size of your market?
4. What metrics do you care about?
5. What are the alternatives for your potential users and who are your competitors?
6. What is the differentiator between you and your competitors?
7. Why is now the time to put your solution on the market?
8. How will you enter the market?
9. What are the dependencies or assumptions standing in the way of success for your product?
10. … given all of the above, what features does your MVP need to have?

All that said, I think this list of questions could be used for an MVP that is motivated by any of the three reasons that I outlined above. Additionally, it could be useful to use this list of questions in conjunction with the second list I found:

Question List #2 for Defining an MVP

This second set of questions, from Manoj Agarwal on LinkedIn, seems a little more applicable to MVPs in general. He centers this set of questions around the facts that an MVP must provide value to customers from Day 1 and will likely be focused on early adopters who will inform future iterations of the product. Here are the steps:

1. First, fully understand what an MVP is, and figure out how you’re going to be able to gather feedback on the MVP you create in order to inform future iterations of the product.
2. Next step is to think big, divergently brainstorm, and define what the fully fleshed out, 100% implemented product solution that solves all user problems would look like. In this step, you might want to walk through Question List #1 to understand the value proposition of your product and fully define the opportunity space.
3. Next, of all pain points and features you identified in your grand vision (Step #2), what are the core user pain points you’re aiming to address and which features are critical in order to do so?
4. Next, of all of the core features that you identified, prioritize them based on which ones “provide the maximum user benefit for least effort, cost, or investment” (Agarwal). In this step it will probably make sense to leverage partnerships with designers to understand findings from user research as well as tech partners who can help you assess the level of effort of various solutions.
5. After this, further refine your core features list to only the minimum features that are needed to provide value to customers on Day 1.
6. At this point, you’ll want to validate that you can deliver, measure, iterate on, and scale whatever you’ve identified as your minimum features.
7. The last step is to lay this all out in an MVP plan.

The main thing I’ve been struggling with as I work to define the MVP in my job is balancing delivering the lowest effort solution that most quickly provides value to customers with choosing to focus on the solution that addresses the highest priority use case. That said, these two sets of question lists give me hope that I’ll be able to work through it.

Thanks for reading.

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Works Cited

“How to Build an MVP by Amazon Sr PM.” The Product Podcast. 13 April 2023. Spotify.

Agarwal, Manoj. “7 Steps Guide on How To Define Your Minimum Viable Product (MVP).” LinkedIn. 3 June 2019. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/7-steps-guide-how-define-your-minimum-viable-product-mvp-agarwal/.