What Is an MVP and Do I Actually Need One?
MVP is one of the most used and least understood terms in product development. Getting it wrong — or getting the order wrong — costs time and money most founders can't afford to waste.
If you've spent any time around startups, digital agencies, or corporate innovation teams, you've heard the term MVP. Minimum Viable Product. It's become one of those phrases that gets used so freely it's started to lose meaning — applied to everything from a rough sketch to a fully launched product, often by people who aren't entirely sure what it means themselves. That vagueness is expensive. Building an MVP when you need a prototype wastes money. Stopping at a prototype when you need an MVP leaves opportunity on the table. And commissioning a full product build when either would have done the job is the mistake that costs organisations tens of thousands of pounds and months of time they didn't need to spend. What MVP actually means MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product. The term was po…