MVP: Minimum Viable Product vs. Maximum Value Product with Adam Smith

liquidrealitydesign for humans
MVP:
Minimum Viable Product vs.
Maximum Value Product
Adam R.T. Smith, CEO / Director of Experience Design
Liquid Reality

Adam R.T. Smith
C.E.O. / Director of Experience Design
@liquidreality

state of mobile today

"The global apps business is expected to make $25 billion in
revenue this year, up 62% from a year ago, according to Gartner.
To put that in perspective, movie theaters sold less than half that
dollar amount at the box office in 2012." - WSJ: Business of Apps / Gartner Research
crazy money

phenomenal growth
iOS App Store Google Play
Downloads 50 Billion + 48 Billion +
Total Apps 850,000 + 800,000 +

seems like we’re doing great, right?

that’s misleading...

Too many apps with poor quality, flawed UX, thoughtless design
Another photo app, another social app, another game
Me-too’s, also-ran’s, and flat out imitators are crowding the
market
And users are noticing...
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"Canalys estimates that just 25 developers accounted for 50% of
app revenue in the US in these stores [Apple App Store & Google
Play] during the first 20 days of November 2012. Between them,
they made $60 million from paid-for downloads and in-app
purchases over this period." - Canalys, December 2012

most apps fail...

most apps suck.

minimum viable product

in 2009, Eric Ries coines the term
“Minimum Viable Product”
based on the unconventional process
used to build IMVU
developed the methodology after a
couple his previous startups failed
made a name for himself through his
book, speaking & helping entrepreneurs
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MVP methodology asks us to reach out to the market sooner
than ever before
private beta, a landing page, or an AdWords text ad
tries to get actionable feedback from the market as soon as
possible, as cheaply as possible
intended to validate a companies assumptions early & often
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traditional roadmap
Learn
Analyze
Testing
Internal External
Build
Release
1.0

mvp roadmap
Learn
Analyze
Testing
Internal External
Build
Release
1.0

positioned as sitting in the middle of two opposing extremes:•

product development extremes
Blue Sky
Super
Build
Release
Fast,
Release
Often

where mvp fits
Blue Sky
Super
Build
Release
Fast,
Release
Often
Minimum
Viable
Product

unique in the way that it combines market testing right into the
earliest prototyping and validation stages
intended to let the market tell you at each iteration, what they like
and don’t like, qualitatively and quantitatively
via in-product analytics tools like Flurry, Google Analytics, and
Localytics
solicited and unsolicited direct user feedback
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MVP is:

suggests you create something that can measure interest in the
problem you are trying to solve
and the way in which you are attempting to solve it
before you’ve solved it
it’s a learning process, in theory, with the primary goal of
gathering as much data, metrics, and analysis possible to figure
out what works and what doesn’t
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note: purist view of MVP is not intended to cater to the whims of
your customers, but rather to run experiments on them and derive
your own conclusions
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the experiment, or series of experiments,
in a Build-Measure-Learn loop,
allows you to continually evolve your
product until it satisfactorily solves your
problem, or your idea fails...

whichever comes first.

benefits touted for MVP include:
the cost of user acquisition for traditional product launches can be
tremendously expensive, so adopting MVP lowers the cost of failing
with a product the market doesn’t want
benefit from testing with real, organic use cases. It’s out there in
the wild, used by real people in the real ways they will use your
product
low-hanging fruit is identified and checked off early. Easy pickings
for quick fixes and obvious missteps
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brings clarity to your business goals: re-prioritize and re-evaluate
realistic milestones
allows you to test your marketing initiatives: value propositions,
and messaging at very early stages, and with each iteration.
allows you to generate early revenue, because nothing speaks
louder than people giving you their hard earned money.
allows you to fail fast and often, and learn from your failings.
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not proven to provide any more value than
any other methodology, and can in fact
cause more harm than good.

problems with MVP as a methodology

going to market too soon in order to validate your ideas and
solutions is lazy and disrespectful
a way to avoid facing the hard problems head on, working
through them to uncover the right solution, and building a great
product for your future customers.
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do your homework
really GET the problems your trying to solve
really GET what your target audience wants and needs at the
deepest level
are willing to put in the effort to really figure out what it is that
NEEDS to be solved
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if you:

you are far better equipped to solve those problems than random
users who click on smoke-tests or sign up for private betas
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then:

with a minimal product that is incomplete,
in flux, and doesn’t yet stand up to users
maturing expectations, you’re asking them
to have a lot of unsupported faith in your
company and your dedication to solving
their problems on their behalf

MVPs attract 3 types of users
the people that want to hate you from the get go, no matter who
you are or what your product does
the people that want to love you and will tell you how much they
appreciate where your products going, but, won’t bother you with
the negative feedback
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MVPs attract 3 types of users
in the middle, there’s those that genuinely care about the problem
you’re solving, your product and really want to help you help them.
this middle group is often the smallest, and their data is obscured
by the overly polarized data from the previous groups
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actionable feedback doesn’t come from beta testers who want
to feel like they’re “in the loop”
it comes from users who care about your product, who believe in
the solution you are offering, who see that you’ve put in the time
to build something that caters to their needs
valuable feedback is inseparable from genuine care for the
product
making product decisions based on the input from users that
aren’t invested in the success of your product is potentially
dangerous.
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WANT your product
DESIRE your product
find it hard to imagine how they got by without it before it existed
can’t be done with a bare bones product cobbled together to test
your ideas
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users, even testers, need to:

In mvp, the user experience is often
missing, downplayed, or relegated to a
“future enhancement”

in creating something minimally viable,
something that doesn’t feel whole, and
openly testing it in the market, you are
establishing a brand association with an
incomplete, unfinished and unpolished
product

in order to get people in sufficient numbers
to actually get valuable feedback, you have
to announce that you’re working on
something so early in the process that it
alerts your competitors

“A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show
it to them.”- Steve Jobs
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said
faster horses.”- Henry Ford (although, it’s not proven he said this)
“Some people use research like a drunkard uses a lamppost: for
support, not illumination.”- David Ogilvy
“The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go
beyond them into the impossible.”- Arthur C. Clark
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worse still, is the misinterpretation of MVP

minimum viable product vs. minimum viable product

as a means to reduce time-to-market
many startups that look at MVP, see a fast, easy way to validate
their ideas as cheaply as possible.
problem is, unless you find that your ideas fail REALLY early on in
the process, it is certainly not faster - it’s quite the opposite.
building in all this testing, analysis and learning into each iteration
can dramatically extend the development process - if you are
actually learning from your inputs.
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as a means to reduce costs
similarly, using the mvp methodology isn’t cheaper, again, unless
you fail early and abandon your idea.
in the long run, if you’re doing it right, you still have to do all the
same work you always do to create a new product.
including strategy, UX, design, and development.
but with the additional and potentially exponential costs of doing it
in continuous iterative Build Measure Learn loops.
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as a go-to-market strategy
MVP is a validation and market testing strategy. It is not a go-to-
market strategy.
in the long run, if you’re doing it right, you still have to do all the
same work you always do to create a new product.
including strategy, UX, design, and development.
but with the additional and potentially exponential costs of doing it
in continuous iterative Build Measure Learn loops.
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intentional or not, MVP has created an
environment where it's ok to fail

“Failing sooner is cheaper”.
“Failing on each iteration gives us insight to what users don’t
want”.
“Sure we failed, but, we didn’t waste that much money”.
“Failing on v1.0 can’t be our fault, we’ve been testing this idea in
the market since day one. They must have lied to us”.
moves accountability for success off of the company, the startup,
the team and onto the market itself.
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methodology of excuses
it wasn’t my idea.
it wasn’t built very well.
at least I knew when to call it a day.
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The pressures on startups & the
pressures on new products are
significantly higher today than even just one
year ago

aim for awesome

maximum value product

why?

Because the iPhone solved
3 critical problems, and
solved those 3 problems
exceptionally well.

They chose to release the device without
the feature not because it wasn’t important
to the product, they chose to omit the
feature because it wasn’t “just right”.

The iPhone delivered the maximum value
product possible within the constraints
Apple faced by focussing only on what it
could do exceptionally well, and setting
aside that which it couldn't.

A product is like an ecosystem. Every feature or function you
introduce, or remove, has a direct impact on every other part of
your product.
Being able to cut something when it doesn’t stand up to your
quality standards is more difficult than cutting a feature when you
run out of time or budget.
You are consciously removing something from your product that
you may have working in some fashion, but is bringing the
experience and quality of everything else you have done down.
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Cut it like cancer. You’re product is only as
good as its worst interaction.

Diving in deep, and digging until no more can be dug to uncover
those 3 or 4 fundamental problems that your product needs to
solve is fundamental to creating maximum value products.
Every product starts with an idea, but that idea is usually
amorphous, and leans more towards the solution end of the
spectrum.
You have to really uncover what those problems that generate
the need for that solution are, and they are not always obvious, or
even logical.
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How do you know when you’ve
discovered one those fundamental
problems?

Once you have your fundamental problems, it is usually quite clear
which ones are your critical pillars.
Those are the ones you focus on, those are the ones you put your
all into solving and solving completely.
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critical pillars

Maximum Value is not about creating value
through building more features

it’s about maximizing the value within the
features you do build.

Whereas minimum viable product
promotes doing only what is necessary to
be viable

maximum value product
promotes doing only that which you can
do exceptionally well.

MVPs compared
Minimum Viable Product Maximum Value Product
places focus on validating the solutions
to your problems
places focus on validating the problems
you are trying to solve
tells you to use the market to solve
your problems
maximum tells you to solve your
problems FOR your market
aims to create an environment where
you can fail safely
aims to create an environment where
you can face the hard problems head on

MVPs compared
Minimum Viable Product Maximum Value Product
is doing only what is necessary to be
viable
is doing only that which you can make
awesome
often sidelines the small things, the
niceties, the polish
specifically focusses on the small things,
the niceties, the details the polish

Maximum Value Product is
about spending the time and effort upfront to distill the problems
you are hoping to solve down to their most fundamental cores.
Then solving those, and nothing more.
about respecting your customers by putting in the time, putting in
the effort, and facing the hard problems head on before you ask for
their time or money.
about having the passion, the love, the willingness to sacrifice, and
the faith in yourself and your team to persevere in the face of what
seems impossible.
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about finding the right product gestalt, it’s soul, and never
wavering.
about knowing which solutions you can execute phenomenally,
and focussing your efforts on those.
about knowing what you can’t execute phenomenally. And being
willing to hold back anything that isn’t. Including your entire
product if need be.
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about sweating the small stuff. Obsessively.
about believing that quality trumps features in the long run.
about Not using your customers as lab rats.
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Because you sweat the small stuff.
And when you do something,
you do it right.

You need to be obsessively concerned
about the small things, the in-betweens,
the transient states - these are the areas
where greatness hides.

when it all comes down to it, it’s all about the details, the
niceties, the design, the user experience, the optimizations, the
performance.
these are the things that create desirability, these are the things
that create loyalty, these are the things that tell your customer you
respect them.
these are also the things that are generally the first to get
sidelined in an MVP, because they are intangible, hard to quantify,
and even harder to measure.
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doing anything exceptionally well is hard.
and doing it exceptionally well takes time,
dedication, love, passion and a touch of
insanity

working towards maximum value

Slow down. People want to start working too soon. Figure out
what core problems you’re really solving first.
Focus on your problem, not your solution.
Set your bar high and early. Always be working towards
awesome, even if you don’t get there, you’ll be better off than if
you’re focussed on the minimal.
Face the hard problems head on. Attack them. Dissect them.
Get everyone talking about them.
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break down the walls created by roles & disciplines and just be
smart people trying to solve the same problem together
involve all key team members as early as possible and
continuously, especially when uncovering the problems you are
trying to solve, and the ways you intend to solve them
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Embrace your constraints (time / money / resources) to
determine what problems you can solve in a complete and
awesome way.
You don't have to solve every problem, but you do have to solve
every problem in the most amazing and holistic way you can.
If you can't do something awesome, don't do it at all.
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Critical Pillars•
critical pillars

Staged Roadmap•
staged roadmap

Staged Roadmap•
cut, kill, can ruthlessly

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