What is an MVP workshop and why you need it

What is an MVP?

MVP stands for a minimum viable product. It already brings value to the end-users and allows the startup to learn and build the business hypothesis. Instead of the MVP, the term MLP (minimum lovable product) has emerged in recent years. An MLP delivers a product in its minimal form that users still love. The focus (quick to market vs loved by market) depends on your product and the market situation. For simplicity, I’ll use the more widespread term MVP in this article.

Based on Wikipedia, the purposes of an MVP include:

• Be able to test a product hypothesis with minimal resources
• Accelerate learning
• Reduce wasted engineering hours
• Get the product to early customers as soon as possible
• Build a base for other products

Focus on “The Why”

MVP workshops are sessions held by the product, marketing, technology and other business mentors where different aspects of the product are covered. Together they form a plan for moving forward. Those sessions can range from a couple of hours to potentially even a whole week. It all depends on product complexity and how deep the team wants to go. You should bear in mind that in the early stages of your product life cycle, every move you make might change the product focus cardinally, and it’s more important to learn and adjust rather than spend time building something extensive.

An MVP workshop guides you through each step of the product building process. It usually starts with the product vision and mapping it to customer needs. What are the jobs your customers want to achieve? Why are they having those problems?

The mentors help you to find answers to those critical “why” questions. It’s easy to make something functional, but it still has to solve a problem and be built with purpose. By the end of the session, you will reach development scope and guidance on marketing your product for a successful launch.

Outcomes of an MVP workshop

As mentioned above, an MVP workshop’s focus needs to be understanding why something is important and what enables you to learn the quickest. You need to ruthlessly prioritise your product roadmap and throw away anything that doesn’t give you new information.

The outcomes of an MVP workshop usually include:

• Agreed MVP scope with prioritised product roadmap
• Wireframes for product initiatives that made it into MVP scope
• Suggestions for building your landing page which supports sales
• Recommendations for next steps in digital marketing
• Review of existing competitors and the strengths and weaknesses of their products
• Proposal for building up the technical stack and architecture
• A plan for the following best actions

Through an MVP workshop, you’ll receive an evaluation of your product idea and advice on whether it’s worth pursuing. You’ll have a ready-to-implement plan with all of the discussed risks to start product development.

Summary

We at Concise are focused on building digital products that customers love. As part of onboarding new customers, we aim to understand them as well as possible. MVP workshops are an excellent way for doing that. It helps both partners to understand better the product landscape and the best actions for moving forward. We are not afraid to ask those hard “why?” questions.

Do you have an idea for a product or service you’d like to discuss? Don’t hesitate to reach out - I’d be glad to mentor you.

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