Comment by brikis98 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brikis98 | Hacker News Reader

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> I'm quite surprised by this, since to me there's little to disagree about. A "minimum viable product" seems like a very simple description to me.

I've found a lot of confusion about the term. Just a few of the many examples I've read: https://hbr.org/2013/09/building-a-minimum-viable-prod/, http://tynerblain.com/blog/2012/09/11/why-do-products-fail-i..., http://paulkortman.com/2012/11/21/the-problem-with-a-lean-st..., https://medium.com/@maxdunn/when-the-minimum-viable-product-..., http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/minimum-viable-product-and-..., http://www.svpg.com/minimum-viable-product, http://andrewchen.co/minimum-desirable-product/, http://www.startupblender.com/minimum-viable-product-vs-mini..., http://blog.invisionapp.com/minimum-viable-product-mutants/, https://validately.com/leancustomerresearch/death-minimal-vi....

Note how many of the articles above try to redefine the phrase to reduce confusion, such as "Minimum Delightful Product" or "Minimum Marketable Product." There is confusion about every part of MVP: what "minimum" means, what "viable" means, and what "product" means.

> If it's not the smallest viable product then how is it a minimum viable product? If it's not a viable product, again, it's not an MVP.

How do you do know if it's "smallest" or "viable"? Walk me through your process.

> If people are going to use the term MVP to describe proofs of concepts and mockups and a general process, then what term do you suggest should replace it for actually describing minimum viable products?

Based on the massive confusion around the term MVP, as you can see in the articles I linked above, I think it's fair to say that you need more than an acronym to understand what to do. That's why I tried to define it as a process. Will that fix all the confusion in the world? Of course not. But I hope that focusing on a mindset instead of a product will help at least a little bit.

"How do you do know if it's "smallest" or "viable"?"

There will be done uncertainty, as all possibilities cannot be tested. But just because something is hard or even impossible to identify, it does not mean the concept is not valid.

My question was for IanCal, but since you chose to answer it, I'm happy to ask you the same thing: when you go to build an MVP, how do you decide if what you're doing is the "smallest" or if it will be "viable"? Walk me through your actual process.

Hmm, perhaps you're right on the confusion, though the quote

> So, the minimum viable product is that product which has just those features (and no more) that allows you to ship a product that resonates with early adopters; some of whom will pay you money or give you feedback.

Seems pretty clear to me, perhaps the trickiness comes around whether or not absolutely anything that gets feedback is an MVP? I don't get how you'd say with a straight face that you shipped a product when what you actually did was go around with a questionnaire.

> How do you do know if it's "smallest" or "viable"?

You explicitly chose situations where there were extra, unused features and where the product as a whole was completely useless. If you have a product with more features than you needed, you can't really say you succeeded in making the minimum viable product, and if you have a product nobody wants is it really sensible to refer to it as a viable product?

Is the startup world at such a point that nobody knows what might constitute a viable product? Sure, there's some blurred points around not-yet-profitable-but-growing things, but if your target audience finds your thing absolutely useless is it really that unclear?

> Walk me through your process.

Again, I have no problem with the process and it's a shame this has picked up so much attention instead of actual discussion around that. I just don't want to have to deal with the following conversations:

"We've built an MVP"

"Great! How did the launch go?"

"Launch? Oh my no, we've just finished a focus group session. The next MVP is at 4pm if you want to sit in."

> I think it's fair to say that you need more than an acronym to understand what to do.

Yes, this is true, which is surely why we already have terms like market research. I just don't understand what benefit calling market research "building an MVP" has.

My initial criticism was that you'd redefined what I thought was a well understood term. If I'm wrong about that (which I seem to be) then I'd change my criticism to "If something is poorly understood, please don't redefine it to mean something different again". When I see a title like "X isn't X, it's Y" my immediate thought is that someone is trying to give an old idea a new name to make it more current and sexy, that may not be fair but it's my first reaction to this kind of thing.

Perhaps I just need to step back from all this for a while. Perhaps in this world you really can refer to a marketing video as a viable product, and I'm a crazed outsider. I'd hoped to be clear about simple definitions of words yet caused/opened up even more confusion and disagreement, so I guess I've failed at my minimal useful comment.

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