Mastering MVPs. Should you use MVP or MLP or MMP or MUP or MEP or MSP or MAR or MCP?
Everything you need to know about MVPs
👋 Hello,
I’m Vibhor, and welcome to the 🔒 subscriber-only edition 🔒 of my weekly newsletter.
Every week, I answer one reader question about agile, product, roles, processes, frameworks, working with humans, and anything else that you need answered about your career growth.
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On to this week’s question!
Q: Can you explain MVPs? How to select the user stories that represent an MVP? Also, why do we need MLP, MMP, MUP, MSP, MAR? All this is super confusing.
Thanks for the question.
Many people understand MVP as follows.
Minimum: This means the smallest or least amount. It means creating a product with the least amount of features or functions that it needs to work.
Viable: This means something that can work successfully. So, a viable product is a product that can do its job.
Product: This is the thing you are selling. It could be a physical object like a car or a digital thing like a website or an app.
Let's use an example of a “microwave” to understand MVPs.
Microwaves can have many features like
different power levels,
defrost functions,
popcorn setting,
timer, etc.
But what is the most basic thing (the core value prop) a microwave needs to do?
It needs to “heat” food.
So, the MVP, in this case, would be a microwave with a simple on/off switch and a timer. It doesn't have different power levels, defrost functions, or popcorn settings, but it can do its job - it can heat food.
Now if you’re like most people, the next question you’ll ask is, “How can I or the team determine the “minimum”? Or, as you’ve asked in your question, “How to select the user stories that represent the MVP?
If that's all the information you need, I have created a video below that will eliminate most of that confusion.
But there is more to the story. Something that you need to know to master the concept of MVP.