Stumbling onto an Minimum Viable Product

Having recently attended a get together at a local start-up incubator, I noticed how people in the same circles get caught up in the lingo. I had recently read 'The Lean Startup' by Eric Ries, so I recognised many of the terms. Words like 'value proposition', 'lean', 'pivot' were common in people's dialogue. How many people in start up's are actually familiar with these terms I wondered?

When I was working on a product for a start up I had no idea terms like 'value proposition', 'lean', 'pivot' existed, reading 'The Lean Startup' the term 'minimum viable product' struck a chord with me, and has had me pondering it ever since. I had developed a minimum viable product quite by chance, and a little by accident. I had not even known that what I was doing had a buzzword!

In developing the product many of the features were required by a very strict regulatory body, so much of the functionality was an absolute requirement. There was also a bare minimum set of features required to go live. The founders of the start up fortunately understood the value of getting to market early and worked exceedingly hard to make sure that not too many bells and whistles were included come launch time.

There were concessions made in the development process. Some of these were by accident, as it was nearly all prototyping, while some concessions were made for speed of development. As someone who enjoys taking pride in their work, it was very difficult for me to look back on the code I had written. That's why, for me, learning about a minimum viable product was such an eye opener.

I may have stumbled onto a developing a minimum viable product, but many of the concious decisions made allowed the development of the product to go ahead and launch, where others had failed expensively. The product has come along in huge leaps and bounds since the early days, and it is as relevant now, as it was then to make sure that development adds value to the business. At least now I know how to categorise my actions ;)

This is another crosspost of an article I originally put on LinkedIn, here is the original all the way back from 2014!

I have other posts too;

On life (more or less)

3D printing

And living in Portugal