How to Innovate with MVP: A Guide to Creating a Minimum Viable Product

An MVP can be part of a strategy and process toward making and selling a product to customers. It is a core artifact in an iterative process of idea generation, prototyping, presentation, data collection, analysis, and learning. The process is iterated until a desirable product/market fit is obtained, or until the product is deemed non-viable.

Building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a well-known technique that has helped many entrepreneurs save money and time in the early stages of startup development. Many world-famous unicorns, such as Uber, Dropbox, Figma, and Slack, started as MVPs.

But what works for one may not work for the other. And without a clear understanding of what MVPs are for, you can lose more than you win.

1/ What does MVP mean?

MVP is what it says on the label. To solve customer problems, there is a product with only primary functions. This solution can help validate innovative proposals. The MVP outlines the features that must be implemented in the product to achieve ultimate success.

Creating an MVP is a good idea to attract early adopters, research user first impressions, and reduce financial risk. Don't think this is the shortest way to save money when starting a startup.

The purpose of the MVP is to test the startup idea and its potential usefulness to the target audience. Some owners avoid this step and rely on luck. This is a big mistake that costs you extra money. Smarter companies, like Foursquare and Dropbox, rely on low-risk solutions and develop MVPs before they go to market.

2/ Why do we need to create an MVP?

The purpose of building an MVP is to bring a product to market faster with a smaller budget based on an established idea. The MVP development solution allows companies to collect user feedback on products and incorporate it into future iterations.

The value of building an MVP is as simple and fundamental as the product itself, helping you engage potential customers and avoid significant financial loss. Before we understand how to have a minimally viable product, let's explore the main benefits of an MVP.

General TA Research

Having market feedback without going through full development is a clear advantage for the PO. If your MVP doesn't attract interested users, you have the opportunity to revisit your overall design and make any necessary changes. How do I test my MVP? Once I've finished developing my MVP, I want to see how users react in the real world and run surveys.

Scalability

Another advantage of the MVP is scalability. After releasing the prototype, developers can incrementally add new tools as needed. Additionally, during a release, we typically don't have too many critical or moderate bugs on the devices we select during the setup phase. Plus, the risk of remaking something isn't that great.

The cost-effective

MVP helps you avoid wasting resources on ideas that may not work. We're not trying to cram all the features you want in your final mobile app or other product into your MVP, so you spend less time developing and budgeting. Compare: A full-size product costs $30,000 to $100,000 to develop, while building an MVP and testing the product costs about $25,000 to $30,000.

3/ How can MVP contribute to innovation?

The level of innovation is a very important factor when talking about the overall value of an app. One of the most important things for successful MVP innovation is testing hypotheses as often and as early as possible. In our development world, this is called a "minimum viable product."

That's what MVP is for. That means validating your ideas and providing facts and figures based on feedback from real users. We can make hundreds of predictions, analyses, and assumptions about the success of our products, but we cannot guarantee that they will all be right. Only real users can do that. They can embrace your product, criticize it, or give insight into new features. Rapid change and improvement breed innovation.

MVP is about saving money, time, and all the resources you need to validate your business idea. Decide on the simplest MVP type to get feedback and stick to it. When someone spends years developing it, trends change inexorably. So you have a unique opportunity to make the right plans now. In that respect, MVP is much more beneficial and innovative.

4/ A Minimum Viable Product and the way we build it

MVP development, like full-scale development, can be divided into three main phases: Discover, design, and development. Let's look at each.

Discovery Phase

Underestimating the importance of this phase for your product is a big (and sometimes painful) mistake. Proper discovery is the foundation of success. During this phase, you should:

• Define and analyze business needs
• Understand product goals
• Conduct a thorough and relevant competitive analysis
• Identify user personas
• Plan and Develop a Product Monetization Model

It may look like a day's work, but it isn't. A small mistake or ignorance at this stage can lead to disaster. That's why we need a team of experts, including experienced BAs, to make comprehensive discoveries.

During the discovery phase, it is also important to outline the potential risks and challenges of the project, both general and technical. Finally, development teams should evaluate available platforms, tools, and technologies to select the best fit for their product.

Design

After the invention degree is finished, it is time to continue to mockups and blueprints of your product. Here are a few fundamental steps your improvement crew ought to take at some stage in the layout phase:

Select the use cases and characteristic flow. In easy words, define the capabilities your app or platform will have. Besides, it can be nonlinear as well—there are selection paths, points, and modes, demonstrating all viable interactions with your product. The most important mission of the scripts is to reveal the method of operating with the product.

Put together the wireframes of the product. Wireframes are the blueprints that define the shape of an app, internet site, or software. These are the files that describe every characteristic in an element together with which facts can be displayed, wherein and the way numerous buttons are placed, use situations, etc.

Put together a UI layout. Logically, the layout degree ought to consist of layout work, too. So, at this degree, the fundamental UI layout of your product is ready and it is equipped to be developed.

Functional Specification Document

It is no longer a degree, but rather a key report, material, or milestone (call it what you will) in your advancement. Functional Specification Document—is a report that details the use instances, prototype findings, generation choices, and high-degree architecture. With the FSP, your crew can now put together an implementation roadmap (you could use a Gantt chart for it), project milestones, and planning.

Development

It all starts with setting up your development environment. Once set up, the team develops with intermediate milestones and tests accordingly. It's also important to have intermediate versions to get valuable feedback from stakeholders.

Testing

No development is complete without proper testing. Functionality, integration, and usability testing are performed to ensure that the MVP works properly.

5/ MVP Examples

Now that we have explained and understood what MVP is, let's look at some examples.

Facebook

The main idea behind MVP Facebook was designed to connect students across colleges and classes and allow them to post messages on boards. A good example of an MVP, is that there were similar projects back then, but Facebook became the most popular.

Airbnbs

The Airbnb story started thanks to a design conference in San Francisco. Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia had problems renting an apartment. They decided to provide accommodations for design conference attendees. They soon saw the potential of short-term accommodation and founded Airbnb.

Twitter

Initially, Twitter was an internal tool for his Odeo employees, something of an SMS-style microblogging platform. There was a need to improve collaboration between employees. However, after some time, the developer realized that his Twitter deserved to become an independent product. Twitter is already one of the most famous social media sites he has. By the way, it was originally called "twttr".

Conclusion

With dozens of successful product launches, MLTECH Soft has the expertise to launch your product. Our cross-functional team is dedicated to the project and will work closely with you to deliver your app release as soon as possible. The result of such teamwork is a strong MVP with a solid outlook.

If you want to know more about the whole process, contact us. Together, let's turn your hypothesis into a profitable project!