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What is MVP Development?
Presently, discussions surrounding software development often encompass various development processes and models, including Scrum, Agile, and Waterfall. However, the choice and implementation of these models typically depend on the nature of the development project or product. Agile, with its adaptability, is increasingly favored by rapidly growing companies seeking swift project completion.
Furthermore, an approach widely adopted by numerous enterprises is “MVP development,” especially in contemporary business environments that emphasize speed. In this article, we shall delve into the concept of “MVP development,” elucidating its distinctions from Agile development, outlining the MVP development process, and highlighting key considerations.
What is MVP?
MVP development is an abbreviation for “Minimum Viable Product”. In MVP development, it is important to develop the most basic version with minimal features and resources and evaluate market demand and feedback. MVP development has become a powerful method for grasping customer needs and market trends and determining product direction.
MVP development has the following characteristics.
- [Characteristics of MVP development]
Validation can be performed in a short period of time and at a low cost. - You can check the direction and correct the course from an early stage.
- Efficient maximization of the product value.
Differences from Agile Development
Agile development and MVP development are distinct methodologies in software development. MVP development focuses on swiftly delivering a basic set of functionalities, while Agile development aims to enhance efficiency by breaking down tasks into high-priority features and iterating through “planning, design, implementation, and testing” cycles.
The specific differences between these approaches are as follows:
- MVP development places significant importance on verification results.
- In Agile development, the primary emphasis lies on the efficiency of progress.
- MVP development only proceeds if there is a clear need for verification.
- Agile development involves releasing each function individually upon completion.
As a result, MVP development serves as a cost-effective strategy by releasing essential functionalities early on, whereas Agile development is a rapid methodology that emphasizes iterative verification and testing in each phase.
Main Types of MVP Development
There are many different types of MVP development. Each type can be selected to align with specific development goals and requirements, and we’ll explore common MVP development types in more detail in the table below.
Low-fidelity MVP: A low-fidelity MVP is a minimal version of the product with the most basic features and functionalities. It typically lacks the polish and user experience that a fully developed product would have. Low-fidelity MVPs are quick and inexpensive to build, allowing teams to test their core assumptions without investing too much time or resources. They may involve wireframes, mockups, or even simple prototypes. Low-fidelity MVPs are often used in the early stages of product development to test fundamental ideas and concepts.
4 common types of low-fidelity MVP:
- “Fake Door” MVP: Often referred to as “an MVP before an MVP,” this approach helps evaluate interest in a product or specific feature without actually building it. It usually involves creating a landing page with product information, even though the product hasn’t been developed yet. By doing so, you can assess market interest before investing time and effort in creating a full MVP or prototype. However, there is a risk of appearing untrustworthy or scammy, which could negatively impact your credibility.
- Landing Page MVP: This strategy entails presenting your product’s idea and conceptual framework to potential consumers through a video or plain text on a landing page. The goal is to collect feedback from users without extensive time and financial investments. It’s an effective way to connect with your target audience and future-proof software products. Although it is relatively inexpensive and simple to deploy, it lacks a conversion factor, meaning that the data collected might be limited if visitors do not take action or engage further.
- Email Campaign MVP: If you already have an email database of potential customers, the email campaign MVP can be a suitable option to gauge their interest in your new idea. This approach allows you to validate your value proposition quickly and affordably. However, it is essential to note that it requires a substantial database of user emails and is most effective when used in conjunction with other types of MVPs.
- Marketing Campaign MVP: This MVP involves a full-scale promotion of your app concept even before the actual app launch. It aims to reach a broader audience than landing pages or emails. However, it demands significant time, effort, and financial resources. Consequently, it is better suited for larger companies with more extensive budgets.
High-fidelity MVP: A high-fidelity MVP, on the other hand, is a more advanced version of the product that closely resembles the final product in terms of design, features, and user experience. It aims to provide a more comprehensive and polished experience to early users. High-fidelity MVPs require more time and resources to build, as they involve a higher level of detail and complexity. These MVPs are often used when the core concept has already been validated through low-fidelity testing, and the team wants to gather more specific feedback on the refined features and design.
- Single-Feature MVP: Focuses on implementing one crucial aspect of your product and testing it with users. Despite the controversy, this approach has proven successful for major businesses like Pokémon Go, which started with a single feature and expanded based on its success.
- Piecemeal MVP: Utilizes existing third-party tools and solutions for product features, speeding up development and reducing costs. Ideal for ideas with advanced functionality but limited time and technical resources.
- Concierge MVP: Employs human assistance to simulate a fully functional software solution. Helps evaluate product effectiveness and popularity before full development, saving resources and optimizing customer service.
- Wizard of Oz MVP: Presents a seemingly complete product with some backend tasks manually executed by humans, unbeknownst to users. Useful for testing advanced ideas like machine learning, but consistency in customer interactions may be challenging due to the human factor.
Advantages of MVP Development
Today, MVP development brings an innovative approach to the product and service development process and is being adopted by many companies and startups. MVP development focuses on developing the most basic version with minimal features and resources and evaluating market demand and feedback. The merits of adopting MVP development are as follows.
- High efficiency: MVP development streamlines the development process by focusing on minimal features. Eliminate unnecessary functionality and complexity for optimal resource utilization. High efficiencies reduce development time and costs, and bring products to market faster and more efficiently.
- Early market validation: In MVP development, it’s important to bring your product to market early and collect feedback from real users. By understanding market reactions and needs, we can identify product direction and feature improvements. Early market validation can increase the market adaptability of your product and increase your chances of greater success.
- Minimize risk: MVP development is a technique that can minimize risk. By developing a minimal version and evaluating market demand and feedback, you can get an early idea of the product’s acceptability and success prospects. Risk minimization gives you more specific information and data before embarking on large development projects.
- Customer-oriented development: MVP development is the development that prioritizes customer needs and demands. Through early feedback, you can listen to your customers and improve your products. A customer-oriented development approach can increase market competitiveness and improve customer satisfaction.
Considering these benefits, MVP development is an important method for product and business success and is essential for many companies.
Introducing the Detailed Process and Actual Steps of MVP Development
MVP development is an effective technique that is widely adopted in the product and service development process. MVP development focuses on developing the most basic version with minimal features and resources and evaluating market demand and feedback. Below, we will discuss the detailed process of MVP development.
1. Request Analyst/Idea Generation & Product Concept
- Business Analyst/Request Analyst
- Generation of ideas
- Wireframe/low fidelity – Lo-fi prototype
- System specifications
2. MVP project planning
3. Implementation of MVP development
- Implement MVP development in an agile style
- Function testing
4. Testing & Agile Iterations
- Collect user/stakeholder feedback
- Feedback analysis & rapid iteration
5. Deploy (Place in the Test Environment/Production Environment and Make it Ready for Actual Operation)
6. Market Test, Market Verification, Target Audience Verification, End-user Test
- Release to the market for the purpose of product verification
- Collection of end-user behavior
- Analysis and evaluation
7. Planning Product Development
- Technical consulting
- Product development planning
The MVP development process described above is the most commonly adopted around the world and provides a framework that facilitates continuous improvement and product development according to customer needs. By performing the above steps in order, you can efficiently develop your products and meet market demands.
However, you will need a skilled and experienced team to complete a high-quality MVP version based on your objectives and ensure time to market.
Then, we will introduce the main steps of MVP development using mobile application development as an example. Please refer to what should be done and what functions should be prioritized in order to release the application to the market without failing the application development.
Step 1: Establish and Understand Sales Demand and Target Market
The first thing to do is to research and consider how much demand there is in the market for the product you want to sell. Likely to be in demand by your organization and your customers. The important thing is to research and analyze competitors, make your company stand out more than competitors’ products, and complete them.
Once the demand for the product is established, it is important to plan long-term business goals. It’s best to set your application development goals, success criteria, etc., before starting your development plan.
Step 2: Create an MVP Customer Journey
An integral part of developing an MVP is designing user-friendly products. The best way to give your users a positive experience the first time they use your app is to create a user journey map.
This allows you to look at your product from the user’s point of view. At the same time, it can provide detailed information for users to design useful apps. Additionally, don’t miss the entire user journey by identifying the user journey and resolving the actions the user needs to take to reach their end goal.
Step 3: Create a Map of User Benefits and Problems
After identifying the user journey, you should create a map showing the benefits and problems of each action. The Benefits and Problems Map establishes all the user’s pain points and the benefit the user gains when each action is resolved.
You can identify the areas that have the most value and potential for your app, allowing you to focus on your MVP areas.
Step 4: Decide Which Features to Develop
When starting development on a product, you should start by answering the following questions:
- What is my user’s most difficult problem?
- How do your product’s features solve that problem?
In planning your MVP, it’s important to limit the number of prioritized features and focus on what you need to bring your application to market.
In order to identify the parts that support the MVP’s core functionality, it’s a good idea to create an overall wish list for all the features that the final product will offer. To keep your MVP simple, you can organize and select your features. A common technique for identifying required features in a mobile app MVP is to use the MoSCoW matrix.
MoSCoW is an abbreviation for must (absolutely necessary features), should (necessary features), could (features that can be present), not (features that are not required), and is used for prioritization.
Moscow can be used to identify the following features:
- Features that need to be developed first
- Features to develop next
- You can identify features that you don’t need at all.
Determining the key requirements of the product in advance will greatly reduce the scope of the project.
More features usually emerge as the project progresses. If the Moscow matrix fails to narrow the ‘must’ and ‘should’ ranges, the MVP may be destroyed. The MoSCoW methodology allows the project scope to be properly managed.
If too many features are prioritized without waste, it can impact the process, budget, and achievement of business goals.
After that, consider creating a prototype of your application.
Step 5: Collect and Evaluate feedback
User feedback is a valuable source of information that shows if the product is working smoothly and if there are areas for improvement.
With this information, you can decide if your current MVP development method is right for you or if you need to change to another development method. By considering user feedback and tracking user behavior, you will be able to better understand what your users want and want from your product.
The role of the MVP model in startups and SMEs
MVP is a minimal viable product for startups and small businesses. This is provided in the minimum possible state that can solve the problems faced by the customer. Some roles in MVP startups and small businesses include:
- MVP is a tool to support market research, allowing each company to formulate a hypothesis before starting a business model. Successful completion of this process is a prerequisite for deployment in the next step. Product improvement and additional personnel are required.
- A minimal product allows startups to receive objective feedback from users. You can analyze this feedback and draw lessons to fix the problem. At the same time, business owners can add new features to improve product quality.
- This is the first step for the customer to recognize the existence of the product in the market. Business owners can let their products know they were the first to come up with it.
- A minimal product is a product that targets a specific target group. Regular products are priced lower than full-fledged products.
Is MVP Development Necessary Before Starting a New Business?
Developing an MVP is very important before starting a new product or business. Below are the reasons for MVP development.
- Minimize risk: MVP development can validate basic product functionality and market demand with minimal resources. Risk minimization allows you to assess a product’s market suitability and acceptability before large investments and time are spent. You can improve your product based on the feedback and data you get through your MVP. Minimize risk and minimize failures and losses.
- User-Centered Development: MVP development is a great way to understand your users’ needs and requirements and design your product to meet those needs. Getting early feedback helps us improve our products by reflecting users’ opinions and wishes. Improving user satisfaction is a key factor in long-term success.
- Efficient development and resource optimization: MVP development streamlines the development process by focusing on the core functionality of the product, eliminating unnecessary features and complexity. You can make the best use of your limited resources and get your product to market faster. We can also plan the next development steps and strategies based on market demand and feedback.
- Continuous Improvement and Growth: MVP development provides a framework for continuous improvement and growth. You can continue to improve your product through short iteration cycles. Stay competitive and meet customer expectations by understanding market feedback and competitor trends to evolve your products.
For all of these reasons, developing an MVP before launching a new product or business is an important step toward success. By grasping market demand and user feedback through MVP and continuing to improve our products, we can build sustainable growth and competitiveness.
Notes for MVP development
- Be clear on purpose: In MVP development, the goal is to develop a minimal version of the product with the most important features and value. Prior to development, it is important to set clear goals and be clear about what you want to achieve.
- Focus on user feedback: MVPs value getting early feedback. Collect user feedback and actively use it to improve your product. By understanding user needs and desires, we can develop more valuable products.
- Focus on core functionality: It is important for MVPs to focus on the core functionality of the product. In the first version, focus on the most important features and eliminate unnecessary features and complexity for efficient development.
- Iterate quickly: Rapid iteration cycles are critical in MVP development. Develop your product in small steps, get feedback, and continuously improve. Identifying problems and challenges early and responding quickly is key to success.
- Strengthen team communication: Smooth communication within the team is important in MVP development. Actively share information and exchange opinions among members, and share progress and issues in product development. Effective communication contributes to better product quality and speed.
Summary
MVP development is a version of the product that responds flexibly to feedback from the real-world environment of the business and quickly approaches customers. This allows you to quickly see the benefits of the product.
One well-known approach is to develop products based on existing models. This means building a product based on a previously published version (usually divided into three stages: alpha, beta, and release). In the alpha stage, if the product achieves technical and technological success, it moves on to the testing stage. At this stage, you will have access to a fixed user group for key user and technical evaluations.
Relipa has a team with the ability to rapidly develop MVPs and high-quality staff. In particular, we can meet the MVP development needs of companies that want to test new products. It is possible to develop an MVP at a reasonable cost. From the early stages, we develop our products together with our customers and support and guarantee them even after they are on the market.
