If you have a great idea, and it involves creating something innovative, aiming at solving standard problems using unconventional methods and tools, it’s probably worth bringing it to life gradually. This way, you will move from priority features to secondary ones, relying on real users’ opinions—both positive and negative ones. Actually, here, we described the essence of the MVP development process. Below, we will explain its definition and check its benefits and specifics of implementation.
Understanding MVP in Software Development
If you are going to build an MVP, you should first understand exactly what it is.
In a nutshell, a minimum viable product (MVP) is a product that has basic functionality to satisfy some needs of the target audience. Its main goal is to attract first users, determine their impression of interacting with it, and think through a further strategy for its development.
Key advantages of an MVP approach
When you decide to build MVP, you get the following benefits:
- Ability to confirm or refute hypotheses about the product
- Attracting investors through accelerated confirmation of the idea’s viability
- Help in analyzing the target audience
- Reduction of financial risks
- Development costs reduction thanks to proper prioritization of the product’s features
- Faster engagement of the target audience, long before the launch of a finalized product version
- Early bug fixing
- Reduced time to market
Thus, by resorting to MVP building, you can start to earn faster. At the same time, the development of a minimum marketable product is especially relevant for startups as it allows you to find out the real needs and pain points of your target audience in practice.
Developing Your MVP: Focus on Core Functionality
Now, let's find out what the MVP process looks like.
Identify your target audience
No matter how universal your solution is, its audience still has something in common, be it goals, pain points, demographics, or something else. Therefore, before you hone your product concept, you will have to define who it will be intended for—that is, conduct user research. To do this, you need to draw up a detailed portrait of the client—gender, age, place of work, hobbies, income level, desires, needs, problems, etc.
Come up with core functionalities
Surely, you have already seen a picture on the Internet that reflects the essence of MVP—a skateboard gradually turning into a car. Formally, this means that you need to understand which functions will be fundamental, that is, without which no user will be able to implement the task assigned to your product. These will be your MVP requirements. Then, as you receive reviews from real users, you can add features of less priority that make your solution more usable than the previous version.
Prioritize correctly
Before you start to develop MVP, think about which stages of your project are the most resource-intensive—they will need to be implemented first. As resources become available, you can assign lower-priority tasks to individual members of your team. Actually, this prioritization will determine your product roadmap. Thanks to this approach, you will eliminate downtime in your work processes and will be able to bring the MVP software launch date closer.
Define tools and resources
Finally, you should determine what tools you will use in development and what resources will be needed for this. We are talking about programming languages, wireframing and software development tools, platforms for project management, business messengers, etc.
Iterating Based on User Feedback
Any MVP strategy consists of iterations—that is, constant repetition of the development cycle based on user feedback received after testing its previous version. Let's look at the nuances of implementing these iterations.
Data collection methods
Depending on the resources available, you can collect data from real users by applying different methods. This could be live interviews, questionnaires, A/B product testing, supervised and unsupervised testing, and so on.
Feedback analysis and prioritization
Once the data has been collected, you will need to identify which reviews should be processed first and which ones can be postponed. In fact, everything is simple: the highest priority belongs to those that indicate that the user cannot perform the target action in your solution at all. Second in priority are reviews related to the complexity of the functionality—that is, those in which users claim that they did not immediately figure out what to click, or that they had to spend too much time to perform a simple operation. Everything else that does not affect the accessibility and simplicity of functionality can be optimized later, in subsequent updates.
The importance of iteration
Since building MVP for startups involves creating a primitive version of a full-scale solution, most likely, you will have to deal with a lot of negative feedback. Some will not like the typography, some will find the navigation inconvenient, and some will not even understand what actions need to be performed to achieve the goal. This is okay. At the same time, those who leave you reviews now are likely to use your solution after its optimization, too—therefore, in order not to lose their loyalty, you should constantly improve it. This will show your audience that you appreciate their opinion and that they also contribute to your project.
Launching Your MVP: Getting It Out There
Each iteration that brings your MVP closer to its finalized version must fulfill a specific business task—this could be confirming or refuting hypotheses, testing functionality, attracting users, choosing the best version from several proposed ones, identifying competitive advantage, etc.
This means that with each new iteration, you may have to take different approaches to each stage of the development cycle, from MVP planning, as well as choosing development tools and startup methodology, to testing and determining methods for collecting user feedback. Ultimately, this flexibility will open up further development prospects for your minimum viable prototype and reduce the risks of its possible failure.
Conclusion
Generally speaking, the benefits of creating an MVP from a business point of view cannot be overestimated. This approach helps reduce the risks of failure, attract investors, ensure a more moderate expenditure of the project budget, evaluate its competitiveness, and much more. In addition, it allows you to quickly enter the market because instead of the time-consuming development, you can spend less time creating its primitive version and, thus, more quickly test its viability and prospects in practice.
If you are just considering the possibility of implementing your business idea in MVP format, feel free to contact us. We will take on all stages of its implementation, from concept approval to usability testing and launch, and will repeat iterations until it transforms into a full-fledged product.
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