The best definition of an MVP I have ever seen
During an interview with Peter Yang, former Meta VP Jon Lax gave his definition of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). It aligns so strongly with my beliefs that I thought it worth sharing.
In Jon’s words, an “MVP is a product that can be shipped to a statistically significant group of people, that test a single hypothesis, and either proves or disproves a single hypothesis and tells you what to build next.”
So why does this definition resonate with me?
Every new product comes with a set of assumptions. This is particularly the case with innovative products.
The biggest risk to any new product is falling for the assumption trap, where you treat those assumptions as facts, without the evidence to back it up.
The way to avoid this is to identify all your assumptions up front and prioritise them. I like to use the Assumption Map for this.
With this approach, you will be able to identify the riskiest assumptions. In other words, which assumptions, if proven false, will cause the entire product to fail.
Those will be the first assumptions that you need to test, and this is where the MVP comes in. You find the riskiest assumption, create your hypothesis, and test it with a statistically significant group of people. That test will either prove or disprove your hypothesis, which will then inform your next step.
Here are a few things that we need to consider for a successful MVP:
1. Are we testing the riskiest assumptions?
2. Do we know what success, and failure, looks like?
3. Do we have a way of measuring the outcome of our test, ideally with hard numbers?
All three of these need to be in place before you launch your MVP.
Too often MVPs celebrate the output. They are used as an excuse to launch something, anything, as quickly as possible, to show progress. The outcome of the launch is inconsequential.
Instead, we should measure impact. In the case of the MVP, what is the smallest thing we can build that will allow us to test and measure our riskiest assumptions.
