MVP and Things to Know

Introduction 

As you know, developing software for a finished product requires a lot of time and budget. On behalf of startups like ours, we are always looking for solutions to develop highly usable products. We aim to minimize the risk of failure by using the fewest resources: work, time, and money. No investors or stakeholders want to invest in a product that has no demand. The suggested solution at that time was almost a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). The concept was introduced more than 20 years ago by its godfather, SyncDev CEO Frank Robinson. Since then, MVP is widely used to this day as “that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort”. source 

In this article, I would like to share with you, especially Product Owner, the term MVP in software product development. Why do I want to share this topic, while everyone in the IT industry is almost familiar with it?

That’s because understanding the basic term and what it is will make the early stages easier.
Knowing how to apply it, along with the pros and cons of MVP, will simplify your project development.
It prevents the burden of finishing a perfect product from A to Z before launching to customers.

Furthermore, many popular apps released as MVPs first, including Uber, Figma, Dropbox, Snapchat, Instagram, and Airbnb. These apps, including Facebook, have recorded huge success in their approach and product development. Since then, MVP has become an integral part of the agile software development process. The agile process is based on iterating and improving the product.

What is exactly MVP in software development?

MVP characteristics

As its name suggests: Minimum Viable Product, its inherent characteristics include: Minimum and Viable.

  • An MVP has a minimum set of features that are able to solve a user’s problem. You should focus on the most essential features in the form of a small and simple product.
  • To be Viable: That version should provide enough value to the target audience to encourage them to adopt the product and continue using it.

These characteristics help ensure that the team can launch the product quickly. They can then test it with users and iterate upon it to create a successful outcome.

Difference between MVP, PoC and Prototype

  1. Minimum Viable Product (MVP): An MVP is a product with just core features to satisfy early customers and provide feedback for future product development. The goal of an MVP is to test the viability of a product idea and validate it with real customers.
  2. Proof of Concept (PoC): A PoC is a small, usually non-functional, experiment to test whether a certain technology or concept can be made to work in practice. The goal of a PoC is to demonstrate the feasibility of a product idea, rather than to create a usable product.
  3. Prototype: A prototype is a working model of a product that is used to test and refine its design. Prototypes can be high-fidelity (with a lot of detail and functionality) or low-fidelity (with just enough detail to convey the basic idea). The goal of a prototype is to test the design and functionality of a product before it is built, in order to refine it and make it more effective.

In short, an MVP is a functional product with limited features, used to test a product idea with real customers. A PoC is a small experiment that tests the feasibility of a technology or concept. And finally, a prototype is a working model of a product used to test and refine its design. Each of these concepts serves a different purpose in the product development process and can work together to create effective products.

Why we should use an MVP version?

In this section, we will explore the main pros and cons of MVP. This will help us understand why we should use an MVP. We will also discuss the points to pay attention to or avoid when applying MVP for developing our software products.

Benefits

There are several benefits to using the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach in software development. Here are a few:

  1. Faster Time-to-Market: Focusing on the most essential features allows us to develop and launch an MVP more quickly than a fully-featured product. This allows for early feedback from users and stakeholders, which can help to improve the product and drive further development.
  2. Reduced Costs: Developers typically create an MVP with a focus on cost-effectiveness, meaning it requires less time and resources to bring it to market. This can reduce costs and minimize the financial risks associated with product development.
  3. Early Feedback: An MVP is designed to be tested with real users, providing an opportunity to gather early feedback on the product. You can use this feedback to refine the product and make it more effective, leading to higher user satisfaction and adoption rates.
  4. Reduced Risk: By launching an MVP early, it is possible to reduce the risk associated with product development. This can help to identify potential issues early on and address them before they become major problems.
  5. Flexibility: The MVP approach allows for greater flexibility in product development, as it can be adapted and refined based on feedback from users and stakeholders. This can help to ensure that the product meets the needs of its target audience and is more likely to be successful in the market.
  6. Competitive Advantage: By launching an MVP early, it is possible to gain a competitive advantage over other products in the market. This can help to establish the product as a leader in its category and drive further growth and development.

These benefits make the MVP approach a popular choice in software development, especially for startups and new product development projects. 

Let’s take an example of one of the apps I mentioned above: Instagram source. 

“On October 6, 2010, Instagram launched as a location-sharing application; users could take photos from the app, edit them, and geotag locations. Overnight, 25,000 users signed up for the platform. Today, Instagram has over 2 billion monthly active users and 500 million people use Stories every day. With time, Instagram’s unique value proposition changed entirely and today, the platform is ubiquitous.”

Source 

Indeed, for many startups, MVP software development is the best go-to-market strategy. Investors want to see sales, not just an idea-only startup. The chances of raising funding with a working MVP are much higher than with a pitch deck lacking a user growth rate, MRR, and other field-tested product metrics.

Drawbacks

While the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach has many benefits, it also has some challenges to keep in mind when considering the MVP development option. It includes:

  1. Determining the set of core features: It can be challenging for Product Owner to specify key features during MVP development. Instead of wasting money on pointless features, it would make more sense to provide clients with something useful and straightforward. However, a min feature set might not accurately reflect the worth of the product or may not be enough to satisfy the target users. This can lead to low adoption rates and dissatisfaction among early users.
  2. Potential for Bugs: An MVP is typically developed and launched quickly, which may result in less time for thorough testing and quality assurance. This can result in a product with bugs and usability issues that may negatively impact user experience.
  3. Cost-efficiency or breaking the image of our product?: If you implement the MVP poorly, showcasing it may eventually hurt your brand. Although the MVP isn’t the final product, it’s still important to make a good impression. Because of this, it makes logical to provide fewer features that operate seamlessly.
  4. Non-scaling Technology Stack: Developers frequently choose an easy technology stack and do not think about scaling in the future under the assumption that the MVP will be a very basic version of the product:
  5. Time and Resource Constraints: Developing an MVP can be challenging, especially when time and resource constraints are present. This can result in a rushed or incomplete product that may not achieve its goals.

You should consider these drawbacks when deciding whether to use the MVP approach and take steps to mitigate them where possible.

Source

How to build a minimum viable product?

Choosing the main features for the MVP version of a software product can be a challenging task, but there are some steps that can help us guide the process:

  1. Identify the problem: Identify the problem that the software product is intended to solve. This will help determine the main features to include in the MVP. Consider what users would need in order to solve their problem, and what features are essential for that purpose.
  2. Prioritize features: Prioritize the features that are essential to solving the problem identified in step 1. You can do this by considering the core functionality that the software product should provide and identifying which features are most important to that functionality. Prioritize the features based on their importance to the core functionality.
  3. Analyze user needs: Analyze the needs of the target users to determine which features are most important to them. This can be done through user research, surveys, or interviews. Look for common themes and prioritize features that are most important to users.
  4. Keep it simple: Keep the MVP simple by focusing on the essential features that are necessary to solve the problem. Avoid adding features that are nice to have but not essential. The goal is to create a product that is functional, but not overly complex.
  5. Consider technical feasibility: Evaluate the technical feasibility of the features being considered for the MVP. Ensure that the team has the technical expertise to build the features and that they can be built within the project’s timeline and budget constraints.
  6. Iterate and improve: Remember that the MVP is just the starting point. Plan to iterate and improve the product based on user feedback and market demand. This will help ensure that the product meets the needs of users and remains competitive in the market.

Conclusion 

The decision to start software development with an MVP or without one depends on the type of projects.

Actually, an MVP is a straightforward, cost-effective way to prove your idea and see what your customer actually thinks about your solution. There are plenty of cases of an MVP like Amazon, Facebook, and Airbnb where a big, groundbreaking project was initially a simple idea to make life easier.

Building MVPs can be challenging but it’s a crucial test to see if people really want what you are creating. We hope this MVP software development guide will prove useful to you and help you build a great product, no matter if you are a startup or an enterprise.

Make an MVP first, rather than rushing to code the next great thing. Decide on your story, and then describe what makes it special. What services are provided, and what issue you are trying to resolve.

Would you like to read more articles by Tekos’s Team? Everything’s here.

References 

Author

Hélène Avatar
Hélène
Hélène is a Product Manager at Tekos Interactive. Passionate about Tech Product development, she is eager to share her thoughts about how to approach product development, leverage return on investment with meaningful features, finding and developing the right market for a product, collecting and analyzing user’s feedback, with the community.

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