What is Minimum Viable Product in Software Development?
When you’re about to create a groundbreaking product, how do you ensure your idea isn’t just a flash in the pan? That’s when you should try to access the MVP minimum viable product. What is the meaning of minimum viable product?
Frank Robinson coined the term Minimum Viable Product. You can define MVP to be the testing assumptions about a product’s value proposition with true users as early as possible. Simply put, it is about transforming ideas into real, testable solutions, confirming your product evolves to address your audience’s needs genuinely. Think of it as baking a cake with just the basic ingredients to test the flavor and find if your method works before adding all the layers and going with the decorations.
And, in this fast-paced startup environment where speed and innovation are crucial, the minimum viable product concept is a game-changer. Would you dare to neglect the guide that makes things clear in the uncertain waters of product development? Don’t you feel it’s best to test your idea with a functional prototype before investing in a complete product? If you think you have a unique app concept then there is a lot more you need to know. So, keep scrolling to find out what else this blog holds.
What is the Purpose of a Minimum Viable Product(MVP)?
The goals of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) are the guiding stars in the initial stages of product development. MVP serves several critical purposes, it helps you deliver a simplified version of the product with just enough features to attract early users and validate the core idea.
Quick Validation
Meaning of minimum viable product is to shape your app idea in its purest form—a streamlined version with only the essentials. Many assume that this process of getting your audience familiar with your app idea can be done through prototypes, explanation videos, or even concept presentations. That’s where you’re missing the point. Such presentations, videos, etc. can only hint at what your app could be. Let me say you are about to purchase your dream car. You have the got the budget ready to get it now, will you directly buy it without going for a test drive?
No! Why do you need to go for a test drive when it’s still your dream car? You would have researched the nook and cranny of its features, operations, and technologies. You would have also seen several videos regarding this. Still, you will never skip the test drive as it’s all about how you feel, and the comfort it offers. It is the same with minimum viable product. It is a live, functioning version made with a minimum amount of effort that allows your users to interact with it. This real-world interaction compacts a punch, making it more manageable to delight and engage early adopters.
And, such early users are people who love to gain a hands-on experience with MVP as it gives them a clear picture of what the product is all about. Collecting their feedback is the crux of this Whole MVP idea. This useful feedback from your real users is your roadmap. It is so profound to guide you on what works and what needs a tune-up. It’s a priceless direct insight that helps you steer the development process based on actual user experiences rather than assumptions.
Launching your MVP allows you to validate your concept and move confidently with a minimum marketable product. You get the freedom to launch it without the fear of hit or miss. Even if it misses the mark you have a fair chance to adjust or redirect your plan to meet market needs better.
In essence, a minimum viable product isn’t something that could be just thought of as a basic version of your product; it’s a powerful tool for gathering critical feedback by attracting early users. Your golden ticket to testing whether your product truly solves a problem for your target audience.
Early User Feedback
Gathering valuable feedback is one of the MVP’s superpowers. Look at it this way you are putting the least effort into getting the pirate map that will reveal the location of your treasure chest. Yet, to achieve valuable customer feedback you need to engage them by setting up an immaculate landing page and effectively promoting it.
Yes! You read it right you are supposed to set up an attractive landing page alone first. This can draw in eager early adopters even before your MVP is fully developed with extra features. Now, these early users who are drawn into your MVP are early adopters. They are a vital resource for your project manager who can now look forward to genuine feedback on your app idea.
Now, remember you are collecting feedback not just compliments. So, prioritize the feedback of your real users more than your desired outcome. I would like to stress again that your early users are people who are passionate about supporting novel and innovative concepts. Their input can pinpoint areas for improvement and help to shape a product that truly resonates with its audience. So, prioritizing their feedback and getting it done with the next update automatically converts their expectations into positive feedback.
How to Attract Early Adopters?
Attracting early adopters is a strategic move that creates a relationship where they feel valued and heard. This in turn significantly impacts the success of your product. As I’ve mentioned earlier, these users are typically tech-savvy and open to trying new things. Who else do you think could be ideal for providing feedback and helping to refine your product? And, here’s how you can make your business plan more appealing to them:
- Early adopters love being ahead of the curve so offer Premium access to future beta releases. This shall make them feel valued and also help to gather feedback before a wider launch.
Pro Tip #1: You can create a dedicated beta testing community. It will serve as a space for early adopters to share their experiences, suggest features, and engage with your development team. - Reward early adopters with additional features or benefits at no extra cost, a great way to incentivize them. This could be anything from extended trial periods to exclusive features. Make them especially available to early users and not to regular users.
Pro Tip #2: Come up with a successful referral program for your early adopters. It must let them earn more features or benefits by inviting others to join your product’s early access phase. - Early adopters are generally willing to work with a product that’s in its early stages, as long as it offers something unique or valuable. So, you need to focus on delivering a Minimum Lovable Product (MLP) that meets their core needs and sparks excitement.
ProTip #3: Conduct surveys or one-on-one interviews to get the pulse of your early adopters. Then ensure to include the features they value the most in your MLP. This way you can create a product that resonates with your target audience right from the start. - Early adopters are not just users; they are collaborators. Their insights can be instrumental in modifying the future direction of your product. So, shape your product plan based on their feedback by prioritizing the features that matter most.
ProTip #4: For early adopters to communicate easily you can set up a feedback loop. Here, you can gather their thoughts and ideas, process them, and also regularly regard them by letting them know how their feedback is influencing the product’s development. This constant intimation of reinforcing their idea makes them realize that they are an integral part of your product’s journey.
Mitigate Risk
The key strategy to mitigating risk in the product development process is creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). This is an excellent approach to test and validate your product hypotheses with real user feedback before making a full-scale investment. Alongside, you can also ensure whether your product meets user needs and provides value or not.
Take Dropbox’s minimum viable product as an example. When Dropbox first launched, it didn’t introduce a fully developed platform with advanced features. Instead, it started with a basic MVP—a simple demo video that showcased its core functionality of file synchronization and sharing. This initial version was designed to test the core idea and to gather user feedback without committing extensive resources.
Read my other blog on the topic of Top 10 Minimum Viable Product Examples.
So, building an MVP is not just about cutting costs but about strategically managing risk. For new startups, developing an MVP reduces the time and financial commitment required upfront. This method minimizes the risk of investing heavily in a product that might not resonate with your target audience.
Control Development Costs
The next thing to remember is to choose the needed features rather than the wanted ones. And, this is about strategic planning. Defining essential features upfront makes it quite easy for you to manage your maximum amount allocated for development costs. So, you can guide your product managers in creating a clear roadmap and efficient manpower allocation.
For a lean startup, a minimum viable product with validated learning is a game-changer. It allows you to test your value proposition with minimal investment, reducing financial risk while gathering critical insights. Feedback from early adopters proves invaluable as it informs what should be included in future updates and aids in gauging the budget needed for complete development.
Accelerate Your Go-To-Market
Just recap all the prime goals stated above so far, focusing on prime features, collecting early users’ feedback, and making swift iterations. Yes, now this is exactly your go-to-market product development strategy. It is a streamlined approach to cut down development time, mitigate risks, and ensure your product meets market demands. Simply stating you can launch faster and increase your chances of market success.
Take SurferSEO. Initially, in their simplest version, they incorporated numerous features in their launch, but through user feedback, they learned that only a few were approvingly valued. They refined their product and worked on its market appeal by honing in on these popular features and phasing out the rest. Therefore, prioritizing early adopters’ expectations observing their user behavior, and reflecting it on your next MVP update shapes your development process and drives more effective and targeted product iterations.
What are the 3 Key Parts of a Good MVP?
Creating a successful Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is not just done by concentrating on the core features alone, you need to take up a more serious approach and balance various essential features. Check out the following three key components that you need to define while building a minimum viable product that is relatable to early adopters.
All Features Vs What Your Customer Wants
Firstly, you need to have clarity about all the features needed and the ones your customers want. This differentiation plays a critical role. Every start-up entrepreneur will have the temptation to develop a product idea with the features they envisioned. On the contrary, what is much needed while devising a minimum viable product is to focus on what your early buyers genuinely need. Pick and incorporate the right features, along with a useful onboarding system. This way you can enhance user satisfaction. It will also nudge them to engage with the product and provide feedback.
What Your Customers Want vs What You Can Afford
Let’s say you have gathered enough feedback and have a list of features your early buyers want. And, at this point, you need to think, Can you afford what your early buyers want? Remember this, the primary goal of a MVP is to validate your product hypothesis yet, it’s very much needed to be well aware of your development costs and user needs as well. Therefore, choose your prime features carefully based on your budget constraints for the MVP development process. This aspect is very important if you want to minimize your economic risks. Only by striking the right balance between these two factors, you can craft a product that meets your customers’ needs without depleting your financial resources.
What You Can Afford Vs All the Features
Having figured out what you can afford and learned all about your user’s expectations you can perfectly define your product roadmap. The understanding of what features are most impactful and how they align with user expectations, helps you create a roadmap that meets early adopters’ needs and optimizes the product’s longevity and customer lifetime value (CLV). This final step guarantees that your product will turn out in a way that upholds engagement and continues to add value for customers over time.
What Comes After Minimum Viable Products?
The real hustle kicks in after the war is done. Similarly, once you validate your MVP the real work begins. Then comes the time to iterate—enhance features, fix bugs, and address customer feedback. This process allows you to develop your dream app on the lean foundation of your minimum viable product. It’s more like adding new features and refining existing ones to create a more robust, customer-friendly product. Each update isn’t just an improvement; but a step toward transforming your MVP into a powerful solution that truly meets and exceeds user expectations.
Enhancing Existing Product
This is the quickest part of the MVP software development. Right after the MVP, enhancing the product should be the top priority by sorting the list of the most voted change requests or enhancement requests. This will keep your early customers engaged and also give them trust that you are listening to them. So, it is the quick bread and butter any founder can easily win.
Addressing New Pain Points
Try to picture this: you’re an early user of a new product, and you have one frustrating experience, what would you do? The obvious, you would jump ship to a competitor. It’s something we all would have done right? Well, Zendesk reports the same, it says that more than half of consumers would choose the next best alternative option. This is why it’s inevitable to refine your product based on real-world feedback in the post-MVP phase.
Such cases clearly state one thing, your product ideas need some tweaking. Your early adopters’ feedback can shine a light on issues you hadn’t noticed before. Maybe they’re using your product in ways you didn’t expect. Now this reveals new pain points or areas for improvement. By attending to these insights, you make your next development phase the best. This validation process is only possible with minimum viable products and ensures your business continues to stay in tune with what your customers need and expect.
Prioritizing Product Roadmap
Do you think you can rely on your instincts to shape your product roadmap without an MVP? Yes, you can but this approach might not hit the mark. Only by gathering feedback from your early customers and refining your minimum viable product based on their input, you can create a roadmap that your audience can relate to. Think of it as a customer-centric collaboration where your customers help steer the direction of your product. Deliver the options they want, and you’ll set the stage for a more successful launch. Ready to align with what your customers need? Then get to know how to prepare your minimum viable product.
How to Prepare Your MVP in Product Development?
Creating an MVP is like coming up with a blueprint for your dream home. So, you need to know all about the steps involved in the course of action to validate and verify the value proposition of your app concept. Find out what you must do while preparing your minimum viable product.
Market Research
Kickstart by identifying your target audience and then trying to understand their needs. This step has to be done with responsibility– you must analyze their pain points, and keep them engaging through questions. Their answers will help you form the base of your minimum viable product (MVP). Next, shift to analyze your competitors. Having learned the pain points of the user you must know how your competitors are addressing them.
This will give you a broader perspective on what customers like and dislike about your competitors. Along with this, you must know the potential size of your target market and its growth. Now keeping all this in mind estimate your market share. This is how you must strategically set the stage for the app concept’s success.
Define Core Features
Clearly define the problem your product is aiming to solve and the unique value it brings to the market. You can start with a simple idea. There is no need to compete with market players straight away after launch. Crafting a solution that’s unique with a strong selling point and a compelling value proposition will help you evolve as a tough competitor in the market. All you need to do is create a dynamic landing page or come up with a waitlist to capture the interest of your real users. Try to get the contact details of potential customers by having them sign up for early access. Portray your core features to align with your users’ essential needs. Being simple, impactful, and engaging will make a difference, especially to your real users.
Prioritize and Plan
Focus on the simple things before you dive into app development after defining the core features. Watch for the simplest path to get things rolling! Start by zeroing in on essential features at the same time avoid unnecessary complexity. Craft a clear roadmap that provides clear signposts and helps you make the most of your resources. Though ambitious you must set achievable goals and milestones for your launch. Never miss incorporating user feedback loops and methods to analyze key success metrics. Analyzing metrics clears the way for you to scale effectively and hit your target audience and competitors with precision!
Build and Launch
Now turn your ideas and observations into reality by choosing the right technology stack. This is like picking the perfect chisel for sculpting. Next, draft a functional prototype that showcases the must-have features you’re excited about. But don’t stop there! See the best marketing and sales channels to stay connected with your audience and spread the word about your MVP. When the moment arrives, launch with a bang, roll out your MVP to the market, and start gathering feedback from users to refine and elevate your creation.
Define Feedback Loop
While your development squad is busy crafting your MVP, use that time to engage your users with a seamless feedback loop! Start gathering feedback from all your online platforms. Combine essential features like requesting new features, reporting bugs, scheduling calls with the founder or co-founder, and even tying screenshots. Make it interactive by including voting options so early users can upvote others’ ideas, helping you estimate overall sentiment. Encourage users to share their thoughts and suggestions on your minimum viable product, then get into analyzing the feedback. Spot areas for progress and tweak your product accordingly. Treat your MVP as a living, breathing entity—continually evolving and refining based on what your users have to say.
Do’s and Don’ts When You Develop a Minimum Viable Product?
Even great ideas like MVP can fail when it is not handled properly. This blog is not just to throw light on how to make your MVP but on how to make your MVP a real success. Here are the dos and don’ts. They work, they are out of our experience!
Dos:
Focus on the core value proposition. No matter what good-to-have features your real users are looking for, your job is to convince them that your app concept is focusing only on the must-have core features.
Prioritize user feedback over bug fixes. Always enhancements are first and later comes other feedbacks that shape up your core features.
Be flexible and adaptable. Bring out any appropriate change to make sure your MVP development always resonates with your early users. Prioritize users who post their valuable ideas on your website, and social media this will nudge other users to share their opinions too.
Track and measure progress to make sure nothing goes out of hand. It’s advisable to keep the rest of your product development process transparent to your early users after releasing the first version of MVP. This openness in sharing the progress, challenges, and updates of your project with the public to figure out if the strategy could be beneficial for the development of your minimum viable product is called build-in-public methodology.
Set realistic expectations. While you are keen on keeping the users engaged it’s vital to remember that it will increase their expectations. So, it is a must to stay focused on users’ expectations and let them know if any feedback from them will not show up on the update so that they will not be expecting their request.
Don’ts
Don’t overbuild. Stay mindful that you can’t satisfy all your early users. Let them know the way your product roadmap is designed and your product solutions are planned.
Don’t ignore user feedback though a few don’t align with your vision. Connect with the user and make them understand how the same suggestion is planned to be implemented differently, earning their trust.
Don’t be afraid to pivot. Even big monopolies have failed as MVPs. So, if you find your product solution isn’t suitable for your target audience just stop and pivot.
Don’t get discouraged by setbacks. Nothing goes according to plan always. The process may get delayed, so do not lose hope. Accept the setback and keep moving on.
Don’t rush the development process right after the first version of MVP release. Your early customers may ask for the next update frequently this doesn’t mean you’ve to rush your team with the development process. Instead, prioritize the features and release them periodically, not making users lose confidence in your development process. To handle this delicate balance, partnering with a dedicated mvp app development services like Appkodes can provide you with the expertise and support needed for your MVP development effectively.
How Appkodes Help You Develop Your MVP?
Appkodes is the startup’s MVP superhero. We have an experienced developer and designer team who will guide you through the entire phase, from conceptualization to launch. To make sure your MVP stands out, we offer:
- Product Strategy and Consulting
- UI/UX Design
- MVP Development
- Testing and Quality Assurance
- Launch and Deployment
For developing a successful MVP that validates your product idea, attracts early adopters, and sets the stage for future growth our expertise and support are all that you need. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you achieve your startup goals.
P.S. The meaning of Minimum viable product isn’t about getting everything perfect from the start—it’s about learning fast and iterating. Adopt this approach to boost your chances of success in the startup world.