What is your definition of an "MVP"?

Most definitely. It’s a very delicate balance that product managers are working with when it comes to scoping out an MVP. You need to deliver it in a timely fashion; yet, also ensure that your MVP isn’t limiting the potential output of the overall functionality in the product. It’s common for higher-ups or executives to want the MVP to deliver immediate benefits without having all of the “upfront” work of polishing it - which is the fundamental goal of doing an MVP. 

But it does circle back to the concept of OKR - what are your objectives for the MVP? Is it to give users quick access to what will one day be a polished product or suite of features? Is it just to see how the market responds to something that other qualitative points of data suggests will be positive (or negative)? So on and so on. This is also why it’s such an interesting topic to me - I often run into the issue of thinking “too far” into what needs to be done to make it fundamentally valuable to the product and our users (versus the “minimum” amount of value we need to provide them). 

This is very much true. It’s often difficult to convince stakeholders that an MVP only needs to be successful at the top of funnel metrics (fundamentally, proving interest by the market before investing too much energy into long-term development). 

Do you happen to struggle with engineers ever challenging the need for an MVP? In the sense that they want to deliver a “complete” product/feature, versus the bare minimum to achieve validation in the market.