My colleague, who is into building software for years, once said, “MVP is the most misunderstood concept. " I read about MVP right after taking a Software Engineering module at university from the book rework. Whatever I have learned from the course was not very useful to build new products that can be tested in the market quickly. MVP definition from Wikipedia is as follows.
A minimum viable product (MVP) is a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback for future product development.
The most important keywords in this definition are “just enough”', “usable,” “provide feedback." One could end up in three situations when building software that is supposed to be MVP.
- A Software with several features that took months to build.
- Buggy software that isn’t usable.
- A Software that fits the above definition
The primary goal of an MVP is to put an idea to the test quickly. Anything that deviates from fulfilling the primary purpose is not an MVP.