After watching this video, you will be able to define a minimum viable product (MVP) and
recognize how an MVP should be used to give the customer what they really want.
Let's talk about a minimum viable product.
First, let's understand what it is not, because there are some misconceptions that a minimum
viable product is the same as phase one of the project or, the first beta, or something
like that.
This is not what a minimum viable product is.
A minimum viable product is the minimal thing that you can do to test a value hypothesis
and gain learning and understanding.
You might say it is the cheapest thing you can do to prove a hypothesis.
You can finish the first MVP, then you get the results and move to the second one, and so
on.
The difference between these two is that the first one is all about delivery.
What am I going to deliver?
But the second one is all about learning.
What can I learn?
What can I learn from putting out this MVP and getting feedback and then maybe making
the next one even better?
So, it's important that at the end of each MVP you decide whether to pivot or persevere.
Should I pivot, that is, do something different or persevere, continue doing what
I’m doing?
Let's look at an example.
Here's a team that's developing a minimum viable product for a customer that wants a
red car.
And so, in the first iteration, they deliver a wheel.
The customer's like, "What am I going to do with a wheel?
I can't do anything with this."
Well, we’re working iterations they say, we're trying to be agile here.
In the next iteration, we'll give you something more.
And they give the customer a chassis.
And the customer responds, "I still can't do anything with this chassis."
And then, they give them a car with no steering wheel and then eventually right they get the whole
car.
Now the customer gets this coupe,
and there was no feedback along the way.
The team didn't know until the end whether the customer was going to like what they built
or not.
The team did not understand how to create a minimum viable product.
They were just doing iterative development with no regard to whether each increment was
useful or not.
The second team understands the value of creating an MVP.
At first, they give the customer a skateboard and the customer says, "What's this?
I asked you for a car and you're giving me a skateboard."
The team explains, we're testing the color.
How do you like that color red?
Is that the color you want?
The customer says, "Oh yeah, red's kind of cool you know it's really hard to steer though."
The team says, “No worries.”
In the next MVP, they give him a way to steer it.
The customer says, "Well, okay, you did give me a way to steer it but I can't go very fast.
I need a better form of locomotion."
The team deals with that in the next MVP.
In the next iteration, they give them pedals to go faster.
Somewhere along the way, while riding on that motorcycle feeling the wind in their hair
the customer decides, "I really want a convertible!"
In the first instance, the customer got exactly what they asked for months prior because the
development team was just following a plan.
But in the second instance, the customer got exactly what they desired because they were
working iteratively and interactively with the development team.
In the end, you develop something that's a little bit different but it's closer to what
the customer really wants.
Giving the customer what they really want is the main purpose of delivering an MVP.
A minimal viable product is a tool for learning.
It is an experiment to explore the value proposition with your customer.
This experiment may fail and that's okay because failure leads to understanding.
What did you learn from that failure?
What did it teach you?
What is the next experiment?
What will you do different the next time?
These are the questions that lead to gaining knowledge and understanding about what you
are building.
This is why we use MVPs in DevOps.
In this video, you learned: An MVP is the minimal thing that you can do
to test your hypothesis.
An MVP is not about delivery as much as learning.
It's okay if the MVP fails—make sure that you learn from it.