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.