The main reason for any MVP is to quickly experiment in order to know about the overall direction for any product to be successful for the targeted audience. Product ideas might be awesome but when it comes finalizing the right set of features for the MVP, most of the organizations take longer time in decision making as many stakeholders are involved during this phase. This article will help you decide better on how to build a minimum viable product.
Few of the common mistakes made by the organizations/startups that we have experienced so far. Two important questions that they need to ask is when anyone planning for an MVP is :
- What is the purpose of the Product?
- How will it help for the betterment?
Following approach would help a better product for your future customers.
- Competitor research is important
Always good to have competitor analysis, just to check if there are similar products out in the market.
And the feature uniqueness of the product alone is not enough to keep up the product in the market.
2. Spending a lot beyond the budget is bad:
Any product development has a certain cost associated as bootstrapped when we talk about Product MVP. To reduce the cost and timeline to hit the customer with the launch of the product, it is always advisable to stick with only one platform ( web/ mobile), based on the usability scenarios of the product.
Product launch as MVP gives the first-hand feedback coming from consumers, helps stakeholder to take the next set of action. MVP even helps to pitch the whole product roadmap to Investors to make the full-fledged product.
3. Phase wise planning is important !!
Prioritize the features that are part of the overall feature list in a phase-wise manner. Before building an MVP highlight all the key features that you think are important to have.
Once you prioritize ask the following questions for yourself:
i. Which one action that you wish your user to accomplish through the product?
ii. Unique Selling Point ( USP ) of your product good to be introduced in MVP launch to avoid long term business risk.
Before we start working on MVP good to categories as “Most-important”,”Good-to-have”, and “not-important” – Ask the developers to implement accordingly, which will help in reducing the risk of MVP failure.
How Minimum MVP to be set?
“The minimum value product is a product with the minimum features that fulfill the early customers, and get feedback for future development…”
Based on the product you must be clear that you need a really good User Experience ( UX Design ) for your app consumers or a minimum design would work.
Remember “MVP is just not about building the other versions of your app or creating the newer work-flows. Implementing the basic features, without the essence of its viability is not the MVP….”
We hope you have got fair idea on how to build a minimum viable product. Thats a great first step! Lets work on “fair to have” and “must have” features now!
