3 ms·

The real question is "what, exactly is an MVP?" Some people interpret an MVP almost literally as almost nothing - just a web page that describes the idea and a

The real question is "what, exactly is an MVP?" Some people interpret an MVP almost literally as almost nothing - just a web page that describes the idea and asks for email addresses. Others interpret the MVP as almost nothing, but a "workable" almost nothing - i.e. some code that users can find. After users have found it, the code will be iterated upon until the original vision is realised. The skateboard people interpret an MVP as making a series of easier-to-build similar, broadly analagous products on a path to eventually building the full product that you envision. I interpret the MVP as being the minimum system that completely realises the vision. That might takes months to build. but the point is that when any user sees it, they should understand completely what this thing is meant to be. It doesn't mean the software is complete in every possible way, but it does mean that everything needed to make original vision working and obvious. Speaking to the original post, this takes time and it might take alot of time.

nostrademons 7y ago
The vision is irrelevant to the customer. There's an easy way to tell in hindsight whether something was an MVP. Did it get beaten to market by someone who came out with something worse? Then it's not Minimal. Does nobody use it? Then it's not Viable. Do they get bored and move on? Then it's not a Product. Doing this with foresight, so you're the one who actually puts out the MVP for the market and captures it, is significantly harder. Whoever manages to do that ends up rich, so if it were easy, we'd all be rich. But a general rule of thumb is that if the world is moving on and other people are getting rich while you sit there refining your idea, your idea of "Minimal" isn't actually minimal, while if you're continually pumping out ideas that nobody likes, your idea of "Viable" isn't actually viable.
- mamon 7y ago
  >> The vision is irrelevant to the customer. Having vision for a product means correctly identifying customer's problem and proposing a solution for it. Dropbox vision is: "Make user files accessible anywhere, by storing it in the cloud synching them across devices". Google's vision is: "Make all information in the world easy to find and access, by having search engine know you better than you know yourself" :) Customers either buy into your vision, or ignore it, and the latter means that the problem that you stated does not exist or is not important enough to your users. For you, having clear vision helps you create MVP, because you can easily identify which features are crucial, and which are nice to have.

nostrademons 7y ago

The vision is irrelevant to the customer. There's an easy way to tell in hindsight whether something was an MVP. Did it get beaten to market by someone who came out with something worse? Then it's not Minimal. Does nobody use it? Then it's not Viable. Do they get bored and move on? Then it's not a Product. Doing this with foresight, so you're the one who actually puts out the MVP for the market and captures it, is significantly harder. Whoever manages to do that ends up rich, so if it were easy, we'd all be rich. But a general rule of thumb is that if the world is moving on and other people are getting rich while you sit there refining your idea, your idea of "Minimal" isn't actually minimal, while if you're continually pumping out ideas that nobody likes, your idea of "Viable" isn't actually viable.

mamon 7y ago
>> The vision is irrelevant to the customer. Having vision for a product means correctly identifying customer's problem and proposing a solution for it. Dropbox vision is: "Make user files accessible anywhere, by storing it in the cloud synching them across devices". Google's vision is: "Make all information in the world easy to find and access, by having search engine know you better than you know yourself" :) Customers either buy into your vision, or ignore it, and the latter means that the problem that you stated does not exist or is not important enough to your users. For you, having clear vision helps you create MVP, because you can easily identify which features are crucial, and which are nice to have.