I smell a RAT, or why you’re doing MVPs wrong.
In the world of startups and product development, the concept of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) has gained significant popularity. It is an approach that focuses on creating a product with the bare minimum features to gather feedback and validate assumptions. Lots of people get hung up on what this MVP is “supposed to be.” They get hung up on the idea that an MVP is a finished product, or that it should be a certain way. Like the discussion around the classic MVP car analogy from Henrik Kniberg:
expressed by this recent twitter thread version
People who criticize the car analogy get hung up on the “no one will buy a skateboard if they need a car” part of it, and miss the point. The point of an MVP is to learn as much as possible about your customers and their needs. The point of the metaphor is that an MVP isn’t about slowly building out your final product in stages (the top line where you start with 1 car wheel) but rather that you need to figure out what the underlying need is (to get from A to B…
