ANSWER A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) refers to a product that has just enough features to reasonably demonstrate its viability and value to a group of stakeholders in order to receive feedback. By greatly limiting the scope of the product to its absolute minimum feature set the product development team is able to limit costs and risks. When deciding what features should make up the minimum viable product, teams should focus on the primary use case of the product and which features are absolutely necessary to fulfill the use case. At times it can be helpful to use the 80-20 rule to help identify the most important features, especially when there isn't one single primary use case but several. For most products, 20 percent of the features will handle 80 percent of the use case goals. The completed minimum viable product allows stakeholders to verify that the features built meet the use case(s) as expected. If the MVP misses the mark and is deemed a failure very little money and time has been spent. However, this is a fairly uncommon outcome unless the product was built to test an unknown market. More often than not, the MVP is suitable and only minor adjustments need to be made to bring the MVP inline with stakeholder needs. Finally, the completed MVP can be used as a baseline for discussion about the next set of features to be added. Some of the benefits of minimum viable products are that they: Minimize the initial planning time required to start a project Minimize the initial development effort Make excellent proof-of-concepts Accelerate requirement learning and discovery Provide a tangible, working product for stakeholders to experience and evaluate Support early and rapid feedback cycles with stakeholders Deliver a usable product to customers as early as possible Facilitate the develop of a more complete product vision The main rules in MVP Development Process An MVP is not a truly viable product until it “sells” (= makes a profit or shows growth in its user base, increasing its value). It must have enough value for early users. It must show enough prospects to retain its first customers months and years later. It should provide feedback to help define a strategy for future development. You need to see if the product is falling short and be able to change course. Or to be able to assess which points need improvement first. MVP is more about the process than the product. Even a service that does not show results can be made successful if the received data is used correctly. See the story of Instagram, which started as a check-in app with a couple of hundred people (mostly friends), until its creator, Kevin Systrom, noticed that users were “hit” by photo filters and decided to focus on that direction. The MVP concept is based on the Lean Startup philosophy and implies an iterative build → measurement → learning process. The cycle repeats until the product fully meets the needs of the market. MVP strives to avoid creating unnecessary, useless products, first of all, getting an idea of the needs and the degree of interest of users. MVP is not necessarily a product with the minimum possible number of elements. The main thing is that it should have key functions sufficient to implement the idea and retain early adopters. What are the Main MVP Challenges? Based on our wide experience in MVP product development, we have highlighted the main challenges associated with this process. Identifying the need for a product Determining whether people need your product is difficult. It is also essential to do some research to understand what users are missing right now, what problem they want to solve and how they want to solve it, etc. Establishing prospects and expectations from the product MVP is a risk and it is very difficult to predict how successful it will be. Don’t set your expectations too high, and don’t think that the product will immediately bring great results after launch. It is essential to understand that MVP is just a test of an idea. It is a test of how much the market needs your idea. Testing an idea Will the product be in demand on the market? Will the idea work? Will people understand the idea? Will the product be used? Will the product solve user problems? These and many other questions are asked by everyone who is going to develop an MVP. Evaluation of the current team The key to MVP success depends a lot on the team working on it. Before starting to work on a product, you should assess how each team member is ready to fulfill their responsibilities, whether they have sufficient expertise and knowledge to complete the assigned tasks thoroughly, etc. It is also necessary to evaluate the team while they are working on the project to ensure that all team members can complete their tasks on time and, most importantly, with high quality. There is only one conclusion – it is necessary to set up the management in the team well.
