The bare minimum set of functions and features that the customer needs to have a useful product delivered to them.

The purpose of going agile is to make sure the project team can get a product out to the customer as early as possible.

At this early stage, the product is nowhere near being complete, but establishing an MVP ensures that this first release of the product gives the customer the features and functions that they can actually start using in their day-to-day work while the project team works their way through the rest of the product backlog to deliver the rest of the product.

As a business analyst, you may be required to determine the MVP for the projects that you work on. This can be a difficult challenge as the customer will naturally want as much of the features and functions as quickly as possible. It will be your job to convince the customer why certain requests they are making are not going to be released and helping your customer plan their business activities around the release schedule that the project team creates for the product you are helping to deliver.