We’ve all been there. The MVP — Minimum Viable Product — is heralded as the lean, agile way to ship and learn. But are we being honest about what it’s become in practice? Too often, the ‘viable’ part is forgotten, and we end up shipping a ‘Minimum Disappointing Product.’ Stakeholders hear ‘minimum’ and think ‘fast and cheap,’ while users get a buggy, incomplete experience that fails to solve their core problem. This isn’t validated learning; it’s just releasing an unfinished product and hoping for the best.
This cycle of shipping subpar MVPs erodes user trust and burns out our teams with endless ‘version 1.1’ fixes for things that should have been there from the start.
Perhaps it’s time to shift our language and our mindset. I’ve seen teams have much more success by focusing on a ‘Simple, Lovable, and Complete’ (SLC) slice of the product. An SLC solves a single problem completely and does it in a way that users find enjoyable and reliable. It’s not about building less, but about building a smaller thing better. It delivers immediate value and creates a strong foundation of user trust to build upon.
How do you and your team balance the pressure for speed with the need to deliver a genuinely ‘viable’ or even ‘lovable’ first iteration?