Short answer
A minimum viable product is the smallest version of a product that delivers real value to a real user and returns evidence about whether the idea works. The test is not feature count but learning — one booking flow that a paying customer completes teaches more than twelve half-built screens.
Also called: MVP
The term gets stretched in both directions, and both failures are common. Stretched upward, an MVP becomes a full product with a smaller budget attached, and the discipline the idea was meant to impose disappears. Compressed too far, it becomes a demo in which nobody can finish a real task, which returns no evidence at all because no user stays long enough to generate any. The workable shape is narrow in scope and finished in the slice it covers.
The question that settles most scoping arguments is which single decision the build is meant to inform. An MVP testing whether anyone wants the service can run on manual work behind the interface, with orders arriving by email and a person fulfilling them, because the software is not what is under test. An MVP testing whether a workflow beats the spreadsheet it replaces cannot borrow that shortcut, since there the software is exactly what is being judged.
Common questions
How is an MVP different from a prototype?
A prototype simulates the product for testing and has no working back end; an MVP is live software that real users rely on for a real task, with real data behind it. A prototype answers whether people understand the flow. An MVP answers whether they will use it, and keep using it.
Where this comes up in our work
Related terms
Minimum Scalable Product (MSP)
A minimum scalable product is a first release built narrow in features but sound in architecture, so the same codebase carries the product from launch through growth without a rewrite.
Discovery Phase
A discovery phase is a short, paid engagement that precedes a build and produces the artefacts a build needs: a written scope, user flows, a technical approach, and an estimate grounded in something other than a guess.
Product Roadmap
A product roadmap is a sequenced plan of what a product will do next and why, grouped by outcome rather than by feature list.
Prototype
A prototype is a clickable simulation of a product that behaves enough like the real thing to be tested with users, while containing no working back end.
Reading definitions because you are scoping a project? Skip ahead and just ask.