MVP is a minimum viable product. It is released to the market to test an idea or functionality. An MVP often grows out of a problem or flaw that its creators see in the market or current products. Such a product is made quickly, by a small team, clearly fixing the release date.
MVP is often metaphorically compared to building an airplane right in the middle of a flight. In fact, the minimum viable product in aviation is an aircraft that does not have passenger seats and other familiar features. Its task is simply to take off and show itself steadily in flight.
What Is MVP Used For?
A minimum viable product (MVP) helps teams create solutions while avoiding the problems and drawbacks of a traditional, sequential solution system.
Traditional Development vs. MVP Methodology
Traditional Development
- Creating a finished product with all the functions at once.
- Developing for months and even years. They work on the project linearly: first they conduct research, then they collect requirements, then they develop, test, and implement.
- Working in big teams.
- It takes a long time and is expensive to make changes to a project that is being created. It is impossible to refuse development, otherwise the entire budget will be wasted. If a product is not in demand on the market, it is difficult to change it.
MVP Methodology
- A product has only one function or one solution.
- Creating a project in days or weeks. Minimizing the duration and complexity of development, "cutting off" everything unnecessary. They often save on design and testing, and use ready-made Bootstrap frameworks.
- MVP is easy to "throw away" if the hypothesis is not justified. You can consistently make a dozen minimally viable projects in order to "target" the market, choose the most promising idea – and then invest in its development
MVP Strategy Disadvantages
MVP can be considered a panacea in comparison to clumsy traditional development. But this model has significant drawbacks:
- The MVP strategy is often chosen due to lack of resources. In this case, the team has no right to make a mistake – a few misses in the market or the target audience force to stop development.
- When working according to the MVP model, it is important to carry out analysis: collect market data, test the product. This requires sufficient knowledge. It is also difficult to sell the test version of the product to the target audience: MVP may not have sufficient value compared to the usual market-level services.
- It is often difficult for a team to “cut” by choosing key functionality. A startup approach to product development requires making difficult decisions – it is psychologically difficult to release a test version to the market.
MVP Сreation Stages
Finding a Problem
Usually an MVP is a response to a specific user request or a way to solve a common problem. Startups who have turned their MVPs into multi-billion dollar companies often say, “We just realized we couldn’t do it anymore, and…”.
Competitor analysis helps in finding the problem. You can simply put together a table of notable players in the market and highlight their strengths and weaknesses.
Experienced startups do not hesitate to check competitors. For example, they make a control purchase of a product or service, communicate with support, order or conduct a usability audit of the site. This helps to find weaknesses in a popular product and "hit" your MVP in them.
The analysis is often carried out according to the SWOT model (strengths,
weak sides, possibilities, threats). SWOT analysis is suitable for studying your own and someone else's product. It also often divides directions into internal and external.
Defining Target Audience
MVP creators try to narrow down the target audience of their project. It is especially important to narrow the target audience for an MVP in a single parameter format, because testing different features for different audiences introduces significant distortions in the research results.
Highlighting MVP Functionality
To determine which features should be included in the minimum viable product, the team compiles a list of all features, sorting them in order of importance, from high to low priority. After that, functions are allocated for testing in the form of MVP.
Usually, MVP allows you to go all the way: from the start of using the service to the target action (for example, purchase). Everything that distracts the user from the target action or provides additional functionality is usually not included in the MVP.
Creation and Test
To create an MVP, flexible development methodologies are chosen: Agile, SCRUM, Lean. The product is created in iterations, each of which takes about a week. There is a gold standard in startup communities: it is believed that the finished MVP should fit into one weekly iteration.
The minimum viable product is made very cheaply and quickly. Therefore, the completion time of the work is fixed. If the team does not have time, then the functions are cut again. This is how the FFF methodology from the creators of Basecamp works. After the MVP is ready, an important stage of testing will come. Teams collect feedback from users, conduct interviews.
Mistakes in the Process of Creating an MVP
The minimum viable product is often considered the "holy grail" of startup development: most large companies have gone through it at some point in their history. But up to 60% of startups close at the MVP stage. Here's why it's happening:
- Teams choose to test an idea that is not in demand on the market, does not close the pain of customers.
- The creators of the MVP don't give enough thought to the design and marketing of the MVP.
- As a result, the product looks raw and unattractive, even if the niche is well chosen. At the same time, there is no second chance to release an “improved MVP”.
- The team has no experience in working with flexible methodologies, the manager cannot build a process.
- It is often unpleasant for creators to “cut” functionality, and instead of a product for testing an idea, they create something between an MVP and a classic product. Usually there are not enough resources for such work and the project is abandoned.
- Teams do not test the product enough after it goes to market and are too excited about the first positive feedback from customers.
