Minimum Viable Product (MVP): Letting Customers Help You Profit

Whether producing a software product for a new market in a startup, or introducing a major change in an enterprise - planning a minimum viable product is a good idea.
When building a minimum viable product (MVP), you should select a feature that shows users your core value proposition, as well as two features that "delight".
The core value proposition is a part of the Business Model Canvas, a visual tool created by Alex Osterwalder that you can use to determine which aspect of the business is being effected by a change.
The "delighting" features provide something sexy for users that attracts potential customers due to it's sleekness, innovation, or ease of use.
When planning what goes into an MVP, don't budget for only the MVP. Budget for enough to build software for 6-12 months that will adapt to feedback.
Spend a small portion of the total budget to release the MVP, and use the majority of the remaining budget to adapt so you can deliver exactly what customers want - and in the way they want to buy it. These other "ways" than the product's features itself are the other aspects of the business model canvas.
If you only budget enough for the MVP, you won't have money left over to adapt. Adaptation is the difference between a product that "meets needs" and one that "exceeds expectations". It is this latter category of products that cause companies to be leaders in their market and cause substantial growth.
When selecting technologies for the MVP, don't box yourself into feeling you need to use technologies already familiar to the development resources you might have. Hiring a specialist in a technology that is faster to build prototypes and minimal products in can save substantial money.
Should the market lead you to find that what you've built is successful, you can always change the technology used down the road to meet scaling challenges, if the original technology can't handle the volume.
This is a GOOD problem to have, and means you've found a large user base - but until this happens, don't spend the time and money planning for it! You need as much budget as possible to simply ADAPT at first, and so your money is better spent with excess funds for adaptation than building out an infrastructure or technology stack that assumes a size of user base you don't yet have.
Subscribe for more videos about Healthy Software Development: kzbin.info...
Related Videos:
"Lean Software Development - It's About Uncertainty!":
goo.gl/4zeFRW
You can watch a video about the Business Model Canvas here:
• The Business Model Can...
"Agile Project Management - Is It Stopping You From Being Agile?":
goo.gl/iXfTSH
#programming #productmanager #mvp

[@HealthyDev]

I hope product managers/owners, startup founders, and anyone else using software to deliver a vision finds this useful. Let me know any questions I can answer below. Thanks!

[@vcdotwine]

Hands down the most valuable MVP video I’ve seen so far. I’m here cracking my head on how to use my limited budget to build an MVP on the right platform with the right code and the right developers, when that’s missing the whole point of what an MVP really is. 4 years later this advice is still gold. I also appreciate all the local Austin businesses in your shirts! 👍🏾

[@HealthyDev]

Thanks man glad you got something out of this one!

[@mirshadozuturk6107]

Sh*t, I just found the right person, at the right time and with great knowledge and experience. I like how simple you explain and articulate your experience. Thumbs up 👍🏿

[@khalilsleimi7832]

Great video! I really like how clarifying on the importance of MVP it is and how powerful a concept it is also

[@orlovskyconsultinggbr2849]

I totaly agree, nowadays we have wix, squarespace, shopify, salesforce and ever more small codeless platforms. Basecamp actually started like that.

[@edgarmlowe57]

Thank you for this. This has greatly improved my understanding as a software consultant.

[@HealthyDev]

Hey no problem Edgar! Thanks for the feedback. 👍

[@kinguakid]

Great topic! Very well elucidated.

[@HealthyDev]

kinguakid Thank you! Tomorrow's video will be about estimates and how best to use the capacity of a team that is truly delivering a product with a lean mindset.

[@kdietz65]

I do get what you are saying and I've tried to work this way in the past, and to the extent possible I still try to work this way today. My budget is I have enough money to support myself and work on this full time for at least a couple of years, but I don't have any budget to hire anyone else. So it's just me and it takes time. I can't do anything in 2 weeks. Writing cloud based software is complicated and I need to put in the right architectural underpinnings so that I can build momentum. If I try to take shortcuts, I've found that it actually slows me down and costs me more time than if I'd thought it through and built a good abstraction from the beginning. I can't build a prototype in WordPress. I mean, I'm essentially trying to build something like WordPress specialized for certain use cases. How am I supposed to build WordPress in WordPress? My strong suit is C# and JavaScript and I prefer to stick with that. For what I need to do, I just don't have enough control over the UI, the configuration, and the administration if i don't build it in a real technology. As for customers, well, I don't have any, so I can't very easily ask them for feedback. I've talked about my ideas for years with other software developers about how I think this should work, and I've validated this about as much as I can. I tend to come up with cerebral ideas, and therefore there is always a certain amount of apathy with any new idea I come up with, but I believe I'm working on a very real problem and I have a good approach to solving it. Apathy is the big killer for the MVP concept in my book. What do you do about apathy? Do you just give up and go back to being an employee, or do you keep working on it and tweaking it and trying to find those user workflows that will really delight customers. For myself personally, I don't believe my biggest failing is in being too stubborn and sticking with something for too long, I think it's the opposite - that when I meet with general apathy I get discouraged and I give up too early on something that could have potentially been a good idea. So this is a real tricky balance wrestling with these dynamics and its very specific to individual circumstances. Finally, you have to understand the menu of options that someone is under. I've just wasted the last 10 years of my career lurching from one failed employment experience to another, in all cases either getting so frustrated with the situation that I quit, or getting pushed out or fired, churning, churning, churning, wasting massive number of years of my life and getting absolutely nowhere. So when you talk about waste in terms of a few weeks building a feature no one wants, that's child's play compared to many years of my life getting flushed down the toilet on failed employment experiences. At this point I feel like Richard Gere in "An Officer and a Gentlemen" ... "I'VE GOT NOWHERE ELSE TO GO!!!" So I guess now I think, well, if time has to be wasted, better to waste it trying to build something I believe in rather than getting jerked around by companies working as an employee.

[@HealthyDev]

If you haven't already, look up Neil Killick (@neil_killick) on Twitter. He is an expert at helping people slice work down into smaller pieces. Also Vasco Duarte (@duarte_vasco) is well known for helping people spend money efficiently to approach outcomes with the money they have. And lastly John Cutler (@johncutlefish) and Eric Ries (@ericries) are well known for helping people design experiments with the work they do that have a yes/no result. Much of my content is a synergy of ideas from the people above, many others, and my own experiences. For every founder who successfully found market fit with a software product by not using the techniques described above (there are exceptions) there are MANY more that completely bomb. YMMV