How to Develop Minimum Viable Product — A Step by Step Guide

Have you ever came across a book with scary stories of business failure? I am sureit would have at least a thousand pages. Every startup while bringing a new product to themarket make strategic mistakes which lead them to failure. It is not about startups every time,companies with big budgets go wrong & make notorious business blunders leading to downfall.The reason behind this failure is lack of market research & product testing.Before making any product usually companies do not realize what exactly the customer wants. If the product does not meet the requirement of the customer there are high chances of failure.

Indeed, bringing a new product to the market is always risky. Companies nowadays look for credible ways to minimize the risk associated with product launch while also getting it to the market as quickly as possible. After all, the product in the development stage does not generate revenues but certainly takes up the resources of the company. Whether it is a physical product or digital, there are numerous ways to get the product in the market faster. Once that has been around since 2000 is the concept of a minimum viable product.

Minimal viable product is a product with enough feature which can easily satisfy the early customers. On top of this, with MVP you can get the feedback on the product you are developing which can save the cost & time you are investing. Basically, it gives you the right path or track for development. Also, if you want to test the basic version of your product in the actual market scenario, MVP can help. You must be wondering how to build a minimum viable product. Don’t worry we have an exclusive step by step guide for you to help.

Let’s dig in a little deeper to under what MVP is & how its framework is built.

What Is a Minimal Viable Product?

With the little introduction of MVP, we came to know that it is a product with minimum features that attract the early customers. Not only this, it helps the companies in validating the idea early in the product development stage saving the time, cost, resources & hard work of the company. With MVP you can get the idea where you are going wrong with the product & its features. For instance, if you develop software, the MVP can help you in receiving the user’s feedback as early as possible. With this feedback, you can iterate & improve your invention. Most importantly, gathering insights with the minimal viable product is less expensive than developing the actual product & making changes.

In simpler terms, the approach of MVP has been deployed to gather feedback & check whether the customers will use the product or not. However, such updates from the users help you in planning further updates accordingly while restraining the introduction of the undesired product in the market. All you have to do is, develop a simplified version of your product & then make changes accordingly based on the feedback.

Process for Building Minimum Viable Product

To make the entire process of developing minimum viable product easy for you we have gathered 4 simple yet valuable sets for creating a framework. You can easily apply this framework to your project.

Step 1: Identify & Understand the Business Need

Before indulging yourself in the product development stage, identify the need for the product you are planning to bring in the market. This can be an organizational need or maybe customer need addressing a current gap. If you want to make it more simple, start by asking yourself two questions & try to put yourself in the shoe of customer: why do you need this product? How it can help you? Once you will answer these questions you will understand the main goals of the product.

After identifying the need, determine the long-term goals you have in your mind & write it down. Simply you have to find out why you are opting for this project? The next step here is to identify the criteria of your success. Make sure to think about the project from all the perspectives, whether it will be successful in the near future or not.

Step 2: Analyze Your Competitors

If you are planning to develop a similar product which is already prevailing in the market, don’t forget to conduct competitor’s analysis. In this manner, you will get the clear idea of what your competitor is offering to the customers and how you can come up with something better. Sometimes, startups or established businesses ignore the importance of competitor’s analysis due to their faith in the uniqueness of the product. However, if you believe you do not have any competitor in the market still is not a sufficient ground for bringing the product in the market.

Step 3: Find out the Opportunities

In the very beginning, you must have identified a market gap or problem for which you are introducing a product. The next step is to find opportunities that can add value to your product. Identify the users of the product. Users are the people who in the near future will be using your product. There is a possibility that you may have more than one category of users. After identifying the user, determine whether the product will serve its end purpose or not. Basically, in step 3 you explain the user’s flow. Remember, when you start defining the flow for a future product, your main focus should be on the primary goals. For instance, if you are opening an online shoe store, the main objective is to allow customers to buy the shoes online. In addition, you think less about features & concentrate more on basic tasks like find shoes, manage order receive or receive the order.

Step 4: Decide What Features to Develop

As soon as you are done with finding out opportunities, now define what features you will incorporate in your minimum viable product. To do so you can use opportunity statements to finalize the features from the previous step & finalize what features you want to build. Afterwards, to make the process easy for your production team list the customers & specific opportunity with a detailed breakdown of features in the product roadmap. You can use a prioritization matrix in order to do so.

Your MVP Development Framework is All Set Now!

The primary benefit of minimal viable product development is, you can gain understanding about the interest of the customers associated with your product without developing the actual one. Not just this, in such businesses, the sooner you will find out how the product will appeal to the customers the less efforts you will spend on a product.

Aristek team effectively uses MVP as the core piece of a strategy of experimentation and has established processes as well as tech knowledge to deliver your Minimum Viable Product — from initial design to development and launch — in a speedy and lean mode.

FAQ

How to Evaluate the Idea of Business?

With the help of MVP you can evaluate the business idea. In the first step of the MVP framework, you will come to know about the credibility of your business. All you have to do is put yourself in the shoe of customer & ask yourself two questions: why would someone need this product? How it will help?

How Can I Create My Product List?

Start from thinking about the most basic features you need to add in your product and then go further it will be easy for you.

What Is MVP?

A minimum viable product is the most version of your product. The ultimate purpose of MVP is to make sure that product strategy & vision are aligned with the needs.