Investors more and more often ask for developing online services. However, about 90% of potential customers do not know what an MVP is, or they misunderstand this term.
With it you can check whether your idea has the right to life. The finished project will also be the foundation for developing a full-fledged product. What to do to avoid mistakes in the MVP development process? What should you keep in mind? What is the most crucial thing?
How can MVP development help you bring your project to life?
The main task is to test the ideas and test the hypotheses. This way you can see if a large project is worth investing in. With MVP development company you can get additional valuable information. It is important for a successful startup to see how to solve a real problem and whether there will be demand for that solution.
Users start using your product and thus close their needs. You have a chance to analyze how your project benefits and whether it can be turned into a full-fledged business in the future.
With feedback from live users, you will better comprehend what your potential audience needs. Without this, you won’t be able to market a product that will be in demand. The less information you have before you start creating a full-fledged project, the greater the risks of losing money. Often, large investors will invest in implementing solutions to problems that don’t exist.
In some cases, it will be more expensive to refine a project to the point where it starts to be useful than to build an application from scratch.
Why should you use MVP development? This idea has several advantages:
- you test your ideas and hypotheses without losing a lot of time and money;
- you get feedback from real users who use the project features in real life;
- investors are more willing to invest their money when they see a live, working product;
- you confirm to the investor that the idea has value and is worth investing in;
- you minimize all the risks and have a real chance to grow from a small startup to a large company.
Test projects can be used by start-ups as well as large corporations. If you want to enter the market with innovation, you can take your time to invest big money. Start with minimal steps. That way you will get invaluable feedback. You will see what things need to be improved.
Before you start MVP development, you should clearly comprehend why users need your product. What value does it bring in comparison to those projects which are already?
How to see what features must be implemented first?
There is a special way. It will help you develop a minimum set of features. With its help, you can prepare clear terms of reference for developers and form a vision of the result.
- First, it is important to comprehend what problem the product will solve. Try to make sure that the problem is one. You shouldn’t try to cover as many problems as possible. Your goal is one, at most two key problems.
- Make a clear description of your potential user. The more information you have, the better the result will be. It is important that these are specific people. You can involve them as beta testers in the future.
- Make sure that the problem really exists and is relevant. Talk to the target audience of your future product. You must be 100% sure that the problem is not a figment of your imagination. You can use the Customer Development process.
- You must know 100% that with the implemented product you can solve the formulated problem.
- Check if there are no working analogues of your idea. If you search carefully, you are sure to find something similar.
- Gather a list of key hypotheses.
- Think about the functions of the future project. During the development phase of the test project you only need to implement the features that you will test the hypotheses with.
- Determine what success means to you. This will allow you to set a specific goal and see what you need to do to get there.
A small recommendation: don’t be afraid to share your idea, especially with your potential target audience. Be sure to collect feedback from market experts – this will avoid big mistakes when launching the product.
Formulating the terms of reference for ordering MVP development
What users may be involved in working with the new system? It is important to identify the role of users in advance. It is necessary to draw up their portraits and define the motivation for each user. Describe the main process and the additional processes which all participants of the future system work in. Conduct a series of interviews.
The customer and all persons involved in the creation of the MVP development request should answer the questions:
- Why do you need this system?
- What goals must it achieve?
- What tasks must it perform?
- Who will use this system?
- What are the competitors?
- What would happen if you never developed this system at all?
Imagine that you already have this system, and it works. How will you know if the project is successful? How will you determine if the project is unsuccessful? Sometimes the answers are hard to interpret regarding solution implementation. Interviews with potential users of the system are important to build around the questions:
- How are you currently operating in a situation where a problem arises?
- How are you currently solving the problem?
- Have you tried solving this problem differently?
- What should this feature look like?
- What value would this system bring to you?
- What harm could this system do to you?
These and similar questions should be asked until analysts see clear goals, metrics, and enough information to describe the problem.
Why outsource MVP development?
MVP development allows you to reduce risks significantly. Using the minimal product and collecting feedback from the real users, you can test the model and correct the plan for further development. This statement is not based on theory, but on the experience of many startups implemented by experienced developers. MVP development teams follow an established algorithm:
- Product research, study of competitors, search for already prepared similar solutions. Attempts to validate the idea before creating a project.
- Description of typical use cases and prototyping.
- Technical stage, project implementation.
- Implementation of analytics tools, attracting test traffic, analysis of user behavior and testing the hypotheses formulated.
Thus, the risk of large investments – both time and money – in an idea that is not very successful (in practice) will be minimized, and a good idea can be implemented much faster.
