Framework library · Innovation and product
Minimum viable product (MVP)
A minimum viable product is the least you can build to learn whether your riskiest assumption is true, using what customers do rather than what they say. It is often not a product at all: a landing page, a service run by hand, or a pre-sale can answer the question for a fraction of the cost. The test is only useful if the pass mark, and what you will do on either side of it, are written down before it starts.
Use it when
- A new product rests on an assumption about customer behaviour, such as willingness to pay or to switch, that nobody has evidence for.
- The full build is expensive and the sponsor wants proof of demand before committing.
- The team keeps adding features before launch and needs to agree what the first test requires.
Avoid it when
- The risk is technical feasibility rather than demand. Build a technical prototype or proof of concept instead.
- A failed or half-finished product would damage trust you cannot afford to lose, as with emergency services or network safety. Test with partners or in a lab.
- You need to manage many assumptions and a sequence of tests. Keep the full set in a Lean Startup register and design each test here.
- The answer is already known from data you hold. Analyse that first; a test that cannot change the plan is waste.
How to run it
Name the riskiest assumption
List what must be true for the product to succeed, then pick the one that would sink it if wrong and has the least evidence. Usually it is about behaviour: will they pay, switch or use it again.
Turn it into a hypothesis with a number
"At least 4 of 20 firms approached will sign a paid pilot within six weeks." A hypothesis without a number cannot fail.
Choose the cheapest kind of test
A landing page or buy button that measures demand; a concierge service delivered by hand; a working front end with people doing the work behind it; a single-feature product; or a pre-sale with a signed commitment.
Decide what you will not build
Write the exclusions as carefully as the inclusions. Billing systems, portals and scale usually wait until the assumption has passed.
Write both outcomes before you start
What you will do if it passes and what you will do if it fails, including which other assumption you would test next.
Run it with real customers and stop on time
Show it to people who would buy it, not to colleagues. End the test on the agreed date and read the result against the pass mark.
Work through it
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Mistakes to avoid
- Building a small version of the whole product instead of the smallest test of one assumption. Viable means it produces a trustworthy answer, not that it is ready to sell.
- Measuring interest ("would you buy this?") instead of commitment (a payment, a signature, a repeat order). Stated intent overstates demand.
- Testing the easy assumption first because it is easy. The riskiest one is the one worth paying to test.
- Letting a passed test turn into a launch without the work it skipped, such as support, billing and security. The test proved demand, not readiness.
Where it comes from
The term is usually credited to Frank Robinson of the product development consultancy SyncDev, around 2001. Eric Ries gave it the meaning used here (the version of a new product that brings the most validated learning about customers for the least effort) in "Minimum Viable Product: a guide" (Startup Lessons Learned, August 2009) and in The Lean Startup (2011). Source.
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Further reading
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