Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been lecturing at UK universities giving a practical overview of how we use the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach at Next Jump. I like Eric Reis’ definition but it doesn’t quite describe how the MVP process works for us in practice, so I thought I’d share how I described it:

The Minimum Viable Product is one which only allows features that are absolutely required, to be released to a population of real users from which measures of success and failure can be observed, feedback gathered and iterative improvements made.

They key concepts are:

• The Minimum number of features, and the minimum is probably fewer that you think.
• Measurable results, which enable you to statistically analyse and quantify performance of iterations.
• User feedback, which gives you a true insight into how users are interacting with your product, what works and what doesn’t.
• An Iterative Process, as without iterations your product will never move from minimum viability towards an optimal solution.