Do you think of a startup as something tremendously complicated and requiring tons of money and effort? Something that can take years of preparation and solid investment? Let’s break your fallacy!
The team of experts sheds light on the process of how you can bring your project to life. The key to opening the door in the world of business, innovation and fundraising is MVP development. Follow the link to learn more about opportunities, drawbacks and professional tips concerning the issue.
The first delusion when we talk about MVP is to treat it like a preliminary variant of the product or just a prototype. No. MVP is a separate product that can bring all the value of your idea to users. Thanks to core functionality MVP makes it possible to use it as a complete solution for troubleshooting.
There are a bunch of benefits you can win due to MVP development. Launch your business, get real feedback and attract investment.
Yes, you can start with an app prototype, and the guys mentioned above have such a lucky case in their portfolio. But it seems to be an exception in investment practice: business angels prefer to deal with more tangible projects. It would be more effective in terms of time and money to start with an MVP.
Minimum viable product is a perfect tool to find out if there is someone in the world who cares about the problem you are intending to solve. It’s a cute way to test your idea in practice with minimal investment and in the short term.
You don’t need to build the Titanic in order to find out if people are interested in journeys by sea. What you need is a small but reliable ship. Saved money you can use to hire a professional team, improve marketing and make other critically important things. Never lose the thought that building an MVP is just the start of your business journey. Make wise budgeting one of the fundamental elements of your future success.
An MVP is a product with core functions and a cute design that really works. This looks like a basic version of a complex solution, but this version is perfectly done. The users can load your app from Google Play and use it. Solving their tasks with your app, will give you valuable feedback and help make the solution better. Don’t worry about any other features: you can add them later, flexibly responding to customers’ needs.
You check your hypothesis and see how it really works in the market. Your decision to develop your project further would be based on the collected data. It’s more reliable than gut feeling. As you can prove the market needs your solution and there’s an opportunity to scale, it would stand your project out from the startup’s crowd. That’s why it increases your chances to get investments essentially.
Using MVP you can check if there’s a demand for your goods or services in the market. MVP helps you do this at a rapid pace and within captive budgets. It usually takes 3-5 months to release this kind of solution depending on the complexity of the project and development team approach.
Now let’s talk about what to undertake in order to build an MVP worth success.
1. Define the problem your product will solve.
To make sure you are on the right way, ask yourself these questions:
- What problem will an MVP solve?
- Who will use it?
- Why will people use it?
- In which situations?
- Are there any competitors?
- What are my product’s advantages and disadvantages?
Another way to find out the core idea of your product is to have a look at your future product from the user perspective. If you were the user of your app, which would be your answers:
- What are my goals and benefits?
- Why do I use it?
- When can it be helpful?
- What are the existing alternatives to this tool?
- Why don’t I want to use them?
The better you know your target audience the greater product you will be able to create.
Since you understand what problem, how and why the app will solve it’s time to explore the market to know more about the business niche.
2. Analyze the market, research the existing solutions.
If your product is unique, ask yourself why? The answer could be overwhelming: no one cares about the problem you’d love to solve. We hope it’s not your case. But what if no one knows how to solve the problem? Let us congratulate you! The faster you deliver a product to the market the greater success you can achieve.
It’s common to have enough competitors. Analyze them and try to turn all their shortcomings into your benefits.
3. Create the concept of MVP
As your preliminary market research is completed, it’s time to define the core idea of your product. Focusing on the purposes of your future clients, you can define the list of the key functions the MVP should have. Try to distinguish the core features that are fundamentally important for the «workability» of your app. Don’t worry about different improvements: you can add them later if necessary. If you build MVP in an agile approach it enables you in creating the complex construction gradually, step by step. As far as you implement functions in accordance with the user’s needs, you can prioritize the core functions. Having real feedback, you’ll see what needs to be changed and how.
For example, when Uber founders started they tried to get orders via an app and distribute them between drivers. They initially worked as a dispatcher service but had been overloaded once they decided to assign orders directly to taxi drivers. So the unique MVP was born.
As you see you can find a perfect model for your business after starting your project. But we recommend considering business strategy at the early stages: define your business model, value proposition and USPs before you start an MVP development.
4. Map out the user flow
As long as you understand what you are going to offer, to whom and why you can build a roadmap for an MVP app development. Focusing on the goals of the potential users, try to depict all the steps that lead to the purpose. Let’s make a sketch of where the key features of your product will be represented. At this stage, you may need experienced support. You can feel a synergistic effect working with a Scrum Master and Scrum Team: developing the concept by brainstorming is a powerful way to catch the best. Leaning on specialization and expertise in building MVPs of professional UI/UX specialists you can be guided through this stage and get profound business-oriented feedback.
The user flow will become a cornerstone for all following steps.
5. Design, develop & test.
The most creative and interesting part of the MVP building process. It’s time to assign an IT team for cooperation, determine the budget, time limit, create backlog (the list of tasks in accordance with priorities).
Working on UI/UX design & wireframing presupposes choosing the appropriate visual elements to make your idea work. It really makes a difference to invest time and money in design. A user-friendly interface eases an intuitive way of the user through the app to the solving of his problem. At the same time, it should look amazing and savoury in order to attract an audience.
The development of critical features provides your MVP with the necessary functions. Don’t underestimate testing: as every piece of the job is completed QA engineers make sure everything works as needed. It saves time, money and nerves.
For example, at Purrweb developers work on projects using Scrum. It’s convenient for the team and beneficial for the clients. Working on a wide range of tasks simultaneously, guys can fulfil a great project in tough timelines (three months) and on budget. It can cost from several thousand up to 38 thousands dollar per app.
Creating MVP is a flexible ongoing process, so don’t worry about preparing all the necessary specifications in advance.
Every two weeks you’ll see the results the developers have achieved by the meeting. During the process, you can impact the development of the MVP altering requirements to design elements or functions: add some features, get rid of the others.
6. Roll out the MVP and collect user feedback.
This is an exciting moment when your first users will get access to the MVP app and start using it in their real life. You can see if it’s an actual problem that your product helps manage. Based on stats and analysis the future development of your project will be more predictable and reliable.
Collecting user feedback will help you to understand which features need to be improved or added and which are excessive: you can get rid of them.
7. Make changes aligned to acquired insights. It will accelerate the creation of the product that meets all users needs and desires.
After turning your idea into a soundly made product you can try to attract investment and enjoy exponential growth and profitability of your startup.
Developing your MVP in scrum you won’t feel confused by changes that your product needs: in a scrum team it’s a common practice to work according to an alive pulse of the project and scale when necessary.
Flexibility, productivity, effectiveness and speed – these are the features that distinguish professional teams in MVP development. Step by step they will embody the tasks from the backlog (something like a timetable for your project) into a top-notch product.
We know these tons of tasks seem to be a bit overwhelming. But when you are inside the process it turns into an exciting adventure where every member of the team does his best in order to help you launch an MVP you dreamt of. But when you start discussing the details of your project with experts you’ll be able to see different sides of it and to feel the path. All you need to start is to find an experienced team with well-established processes, a cool related portfolio and excellent reviews. After that, you can trust them to guide you through all these stages and create an MVP worth thriving in the market.
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