What is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?
MVP or Minimum Viable Product is a concept that originated from the best practices of Agile development. The MVP approach of product development involves a step-by-step evolution of a product by keeping in mind the user experience and customer feedback.
MVP corresponds to the philosophy of “Ship early, repair later,” which is supported by many notable minds including Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, as well as Eric Ries, who first introduced the MVP technique in his book, “The Lean Startup.” In short, a product can be called minimally viable if it has some minimum features which can solve the customer pain points and lead the core value proposition of early adopters.
What is the purpose of building MVPs?
Many projects fail badly because they do big bang delivery without actually examining their product-market fit by testing it in the actual market. The goal of an MVP is to help companies validate their opportunity hypothesis and get the green light for developing a full-fledged product.
In other words, the MVP approach helps startup companies and larger enterprises gather insights from their target users on their product-market fit with the minimum feature set product – By conducting customer surveys, campaigns for understanding customer experience of their products by collecting feedbacks.
Few main objectives of building an MVP is to
- Learn the market fitment
- Prototype your minimum feature product
- Validate the idea with real-time customer data
- Improve the product incrementally with customer feedback
Though it is functionally constrained and raw in appearance, MVP is meant to deliver the core value by getting continuous feedback to achieve the finest product for customer satisfaction.
Difference between POC, Prototype & MVP
Proof of Concept (POC), Prototype, and MVP is not one and the same. It should not be used interchangeably. In fact, the MVP is a stage in the product development life cycle that lies in-between the Prototype and the Full-fledged Product.
A typical product development life cycle involves 4 stages
- Proof of Concept (POC)
- Prototype
- Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
- Full-fledged product
Unlike the MVP, POC is not a customer-focused task. Proof of concept is a test of an idea or an assumption. For example, when you are building a single-page app, POC helps in finalizing a particular tech stack like Node.js as a perfect fit from a technology standpoint. In simpler terms, a POC answers the question, “Can we build that?” and the Prototype answers, “How can we build that?”
Pro Tip: A proof of concept helps decrease technology risks and prove the feasibility of doing a particular task.
On the other hand, Prototype and a minimum viable product are similar to some extent, because both take consideration for user feedback. But the early adopters of a prototype are the people involved in its creation. Meanwhile, MVP goes public.
Note: Prototype acts as a bait for investors and underlies the MVP.
Types of MVP
There are many approaches to building a minimum viable product for acquiring early adopters and asserting a product on the market.
Let us look at popular MVP models that help in defining and optimizing a product strategy by learning the demand for the product.
- Concierge MVP
- Wizard of Oz MVP
- Piecemeal MVP
- Single feature MVP
Concierge MVP
Concierge MVP is an approach that uses manual guiding of users instead of an automated algorithm. This type of MVP approach is a fit for a project based on recommendation engines or even machine learning techniques. In simpler terms, humans are put in the front and center of the customer buying journey. Complex algorithms do not power it, and real humans perform the core functionality.
For example, Food on the Table (later acquired by Scripps Networks Int.) is the most famous example of concierge MVP. In 2009, Manuel Rosso, experimented by interviewing people and learned their food preferences and their budgets. He manually compiled all the shopping lists, selected recipes, and collected coupons from grocery stores to deliver his Food on the Table product helping thousands of people shop wisely and helps grocery stores market themselves effectively.
Pro Tip: Concierge MVP helps deep understanding of customer interaction and a strong foundation for product iterations.
Why do you need a minimum viable product?
Every new business is born out of chaos. Three-quarters of enterprises do not go past the initial stage, which is also the most decisive one. Whether you survive or go under depends on how well you steer through the troubled waters of startup. And that’s exactly where a minimum viable product (MVP) may be your beacon.
In any case, the way toward building up an application turns out to be significantly increasingly tricky when application improvement legends lead to terrible advancement usage choices.
Regular Myths and the Absolute Solutions about Mobile App Development Process:
Try not to Pay Attention to Wireframes and Prototypes
With regards to versatile application advancement, you may have run over a tip that wireframes are futile.
Then again, the model will help in giving visual illustrations and liveliness.
Code Everything in the Starting
Before getting into the details of building a Minimum Viable product, or MVP, let us briefly look at what a Minimum Viable Product is and how it can help your business?
As the name suggests, a Minimum Viable Product involves building a product with only the bare minimum and most essential features that many companies launch in the marketplace as a testing tool.
The advantages of a Minimum Viable Product are manifold.
So the question you need to ask yourself is- how to gain maximum insight with minimum efforts?Step 1: Observe the MarketIn other words, indulge in market research.
You rush to execute it as you think that the sheer brilliance of your idea is enough to make it an instant success.
Hold surveys, look at market trends, observe your competitors.
Mark runs a real estate firm. He recently attended a business conference where he learned that he could close deals faster by creating a mobile application that lets potential clients browse through his property gallery without visiting the office.
He was excited about the possibilities that creating a mobile application could open for his business, but lost all that zeal when a friend told him that the cost of developing an app is high.
Without asking further questions or at least using a mobile app development cost calculator, Mark gave up his dream of creating an application for his real estate firm.
Well, many people are like Mark in the story above, they know that mobile applications can be an essential asset to their business but are put off by the belief that they would have to break a bank before hiring a mobile app developer.
4 years ago, my friend Michael decided to quit his job and start making figurines.
He was going to rent an office in order to make a reception for clients and in the nearby building there was his workshop.
His clients were people of their 40s and more with a high income and who were really ready to spend a lot of money for a customized figurine.
Finally, he founded the proper one and spent 1.5 months to make it well equipped.
We have created a tool that will help you with it.
About half a year before this story, my other friend Peter decided to open his own business – a small cafe.
