Why MVPs are essential
“Experienced” product owners seem to look down on MVPs. This is usually because they have the “experience” and they believe in their market assumptions.
The deal is, MVPs exist so you don’t have to believe. When a lot of resources are on the line, your belief means nothing. You need that MVP to enter the feedback-iteration loop.
Even in the ideal world, in which that you absolutely knew what the market wanted, MVPS would still make sense.
Let’s hop on FigJam because that’s what cool kids use these days (and it rocks!).
Here is an extremely realistic revenue by time chart of an MVP. As you can see, even until we hit Product / Market fit, we’re still generating them Benjamins! But if we were to act like a grumpy PM and postpone the launch until we were perfect enough for PMF, we’d miss that revenue. Here is that sad graph.
Which one makes more sense? Of course, every situation is different and may require a different approach. Not every industry can benefit from MVPs (MVP of a clothing line?). But in general, it’d be wise to keep this in mind especially if you’re in the software industry.