“What’s your MVP?” When you work in software development, chances are good that you hear this question—or at least some variation of it—all the time. But what exactly is an MVP? And why is it so important to the software development process? That’s what we’ll be tackling in this post.
What will you do to ensure that you know—in advance—what your customers love?
To ensure that you know—in advance—what your customers love, it is essential to:
-
Understand what they value. Be sure to ask your customers about their goals, values and beliefs. This will help you understand their problems in more detail, which will inform the way you approach solutions.
-
Find out the nitty-gritty details of their lives. You can accomplish this by observing them in person or through research such as surveys, interviews, focus groups etc.
Start small and work your way up
To build an MVP, you need to start small and work your way up.
You should begin by building something that is easy to build, something that is safe to test. Something you can measure. Something you can sell and support.
It pays to spend time and resources wisely
It pays to spend time and resources wisely.
A “minimum viable product” (MVP) is not a finished product. It is an unfinished version of the final product, which helps you evaluate your market and get feedback from customers early in development. You don’t want to build a whole bunch of features that could end up being useless or unnecessary for your users—and this would also mean wasting time and money on them. So as soon as possible, try building a minimum viable product that can help you test some assumptions while still giving users something they can use right away.
Think about what features are absolutely necessary for people who would buy your solution at every stage in its development process: early testing with real people will help determine if there are any other important components missing from this initial release of your MVP or if there are any additional components that need more development before launching it into the marketplace.
Conclusion
Whatever your product or service, you’ve got a lot of customers to think about and expectations to manage. With the right tools in place, you can more easily do both. Speak to us to see how we can help you in this process.