It has many fancy names and faces - Minimum Viable Product, Minimum Acceptable Product, Minimum Awesome Product - but it doesn't matter what you call it. To simply put it - MVP is the first step to validate your idea for a business.
A case for taking it one step at a time
MVP is the product of the product discovery process, delivered through the development. It’s the beginning of the journey to a great final product. MVP is made based on the features crucial for implementing primary business strategy, as proven during the product discovery phase.
There’s no point in creating a product that no one wants. The proposed solution or service should answer specific needs and focus on what's important for the users. Workshops and user testing are a practice in empathy and compassion that gives a chance to understand the target market better before development even starts.
Distinguish which features are necessary and nice to have but not essential for the MVP to fulfil its purpose. It’s most reasonable to make sure that the core functions of the product are covered. Users also pay attention to design. Gathering feedback is useful to plan the next steps in product development.
Properly defined success metrics will help build a strategy for experimentation with the product. Goals should be realistic and understandable. For example, think about download and launch rate, percentage of active users or customer lifetime value.
Prepare a go-to-market strategy and connect with your customers. Seeing users interact with the MVP - what works, what needs to be improved - is valuable data required to plan the next steps in line with the Lean Methodology approach. Test, change, improve - and create the best product possible.
Trust the process
See what the stages of MVP development are and what outcome you should have after each one.
1
At the beginning, the team gets to know the project background and a basic vision of the value proposition based on a user pain you’ve noticed.
2
Few intense days of work result in defining the persona, improved knowledge transfer within the team and most importantly – product lifecycle in a nutshell with plans for its growth.
3
First wireframes are made ready for tests. A prototype is a clickable version of the product’s wireframes. Good UI/UX is what users expect nowadays.
4
Gather user feedback, make fixes and complete final designs of the product.
5
With finished designs, it’s possible to set objectives for the delivery phase, work on estimations and define success metrics.
6
See progress firsthand and have the product ready for release in no time.
7
After the release, users can interact with the product, and you can gather their feedback and implement changes.
8
With a smoothly working MVP, you can make plans for further development.
Nowadays, it’s easy to come up with new business models, but it’s still necessary to check whether they are profitable and desired by the users. Failure to understand the market’s needs is the number one cause of startup bankruptcies. With an MVP, it’s possible to test the idea without straining the budget.
A roadmap is a long-term plan for product development. Planning ahead of time helps estimate the budget and necessary resources. It’s important to be reasonable when it comes to planning - doing everything at once is impossible. A well-designed roadmap makes it easier to plan the product’s back-end architecture and prepare it for future scaling.
The sole purpose of building an MVP is to test the value proposition and how it resonates with the users. An MVP is not meant to be a perfect, finished version of the product. Thus, it’s essential to define what features are necessary for the users to grasp what the product is about.
A prototype is a clickable wireframe of the product, made with user testing in mind. Thanks to user testing, it’s possible to check whether the user understands the concept and if everything is understandable from a UX point of view. Users can also share their feedback on the business concept itself.
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