Do I need a minimum viable product?
This is the first contribution to this blog by Associate Peter Hanschke, an Ottawa-based product management specialist.
By Peter Hanschke
Congratulations! You finally got some money to hire one or more developers or you found enough time to start developing your product on your own. You look at the list of features and capabilities that your product needs to satisfy the needs of your target market and it is huge. You do some rough calculations and unfortunately the number of hours to implement everything is well beyond your financial runway or your market opportunity window. So how do you pick which features to do first?
Let’s first define a Minimum Viable Product. An MVP is simply the minimum set of features that provide the initial value to the user of your product. It is crucial that this first incarnation of your product must show your value differentiation. In other words, not only must it provide that initial functionality for your first users, it also needs to show off why your product is different or unique in the market place.
