Minimum Viable Product
Posted: Thu 12 June, 2014 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 1BEM, Business, Creativity, Customer Services, Cynicism, Design, Geeky, Thoughts, Web Development, Work-related |2 Comments »One of the buzzwords in the current (but please God, not much longer) workplace is “Minimum Viable Product“. It basically means “The customer gets what they’ve asked for, and nothing more”. In other words, “Yeah, fuck it, that’ll do”.
It’s a good concept when a business is starting, when you’re writing the first versions, where it’s a product idea and you don’t know if it’ll work, and/or what’s going to be the popular or desired features. So you write the minimum to launch it, make things work without bells and whistles, and find out what people want. It stops you from diving down the wrong path (and yes, mixed metaphors, live with it) and wasting time that’s valuable, that could be better spent on creating the things people do want.
It’s great for a startup, for a new product.
It’s NOT great in any other eventuality, and particularly not for an established product with customers paying shedloads. It leads to inconsistencies, weird functionality, and general oddities. Buttons disappear, sections are different, and it’s all a bit amateur. And that’s exactly what we’ve got.
But can you persuade them? Nope. It’s the buzzword, it’s How Things Must Be.
Which just isn’t healthy.
AMEN!!
The Wikipedia article for this bastard term even states that it’s used during startup… we have it in my workplace too, for a 10+ yr old, Enterprise product. I hate it, sets the bar low.
I’m trying to get it banned (or at least cause enough of a fuss when I hear it that people stop using it, it helps that I’m a loud mouthed twat at times 😉 )
I’m doing the same kind of thing, pointing out the issues where MVP has resulted in significant visits from the FuckUp Fairy