Product Development: What to know about Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?
Nowadays, you will find a lot of opinions and controversy around MVPs development and if it’s the way to go when you are developing a new product.
This happens because the term has become really popular in the past years and it’s a common error to confuse the meaning of it. At Claw Studios we believe that developing an MVP is a crucial step when you are trying to launch a product to the market, and I will try to answer some of the most asked questions that we have received from our customers.
What is an MVP?
It’s acronyms refer to Minimum Viable Product, it’s a concept that comes from Lean Startup , and it’s just a small version of a product with just enough features to be usable.
In other words, it’s a prototype, something you build with only the core features of your product.
I want to highlight that it’s not a complete product and it’s not the first release of your product, it’s just a functional prototype of the most important feature that your will offer to users, UI/UX design and other features comes later.
“If You’re Not Embarrassed By The First Version Of Your Product, You’ve Launched Too Late” — Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn
What is it for?
“The minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.” – Eric Ries
The idea of developing an MVP is to test your value proposition on the market with real users and gather information from the market that then will be used to improve your real product.
This means, that you have to test how your core features resolve the chosen problem for a small group of real users that represent the market niche that you are targeting. The way you solve the problem is your value proposition.
When should I build it?
From our experience working on MVPs, we had identified and listed below, what are the important things you must do before you start to build a minimum version of your product if you want to get the most value of it.
- Find a problem.
- Propose a solution.
- Work on a business idea around the proposed solution.
- Do a small market study. (Niche and Competitors)
- Identify what makes your product different from competition.
- Validate your idea with real people from that niche.
- Work on a business model.
- Document everything.
How can I build an MVP if I am not a technical person?
There are multiple options:
- Look for a technical Co-Founder to become the CTO and build the MVP
- Build a development team and manage the development process by yourself.
- Hire professionals through the staff augmentation modality.
- Outsource the whole development as a “Key-in-hand” project. (Not Recommended)
Or.. you can contact us if you are interested in building a long term partnership with Claw Studios where we provide the knowledge and a top talented team to build your product and help you make a successful product.
Independently of your selection, if you want to succeed, you must learn about Software Development Life Cycle and Agile Methodologies, and you will always have to be part of the design and development process acting as a Product Owner.
Conclusions
At the company we are gathering new validated learning everyday, and I think that I should end this article listing some of the things to have in mind to build a successful MVP.
- Work on you idea.
- Know your market.
- Validate your idea.
- Make it profitable.
- Document everything.
- Build an MVP only focusing on what makes your idea different from competitors.
- Keep it simple, functional and small.
- Always be part of the Design and Development Process.
- Deploy, Learn, Build, Repeat.
Thanks for your time
Maximiliano Malvido – Founder & CEO @ Claw Studios
