A Comprehensive Guide on MVP

Preface

Have an idea? Great! You can’t wait to break the news to the world! Success? Well, you haven’t even thought about it, thanks to your unrivaled belief in the idea.

But wait, it’s not that straightforward! You can’t be certain that your idea of perfection would be met with approval by others. In other words, if you don’t wish to remain the only user of your product, you have to start thinking differently, In fact, you have to pay heed to your user-opinions. This is crucial for any mobile app development company

Humans have always had a yearning for perfection. Take any field of human-expertize; it keeps changing, improving and evolving to quench that ‘perfection-apto. MVP is based on the same philosophy – to attain perfection! MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product and it’s simply a prototype of a much bigger, unfinished product but with only the core features and basic functionality.

What really is an MVP?

The concept behind MVP is that a product needs to be made and then remade until it could not be made any better. The same concept has been borrowed in various industries. Mobile App Development is one such field where MVP has gained immense credence.

The Plethora of mobile apps for business go through the MVP process before being launched as a full-fledged product. But the ‘million-dollar question still remains. Is MVP justified? To a greater extent, yes. The argument against MVP is that why should a business go through the hassle of developing prototype after prototype to launch one product when all that could be accomplished in one go?

It does sound plausible. Presumably, a business launches a product to add value to its brand, to procure investment, or even gain a competitive edge. But all those high hopes could come crashing down if the audience doesn’t receive it as well as the business had intended.

An MVP is seen as a measure to negate the setback of that harsh reality-check. With each MVP you look to understand your audience’s expectations better. Not only that, you even look to explore the capabilities of your product as you couldn’t in just one go.

And it’s not just the disappointment that a business has to deal with if their product fails, developing a finished product involves a huge investment of time, money and resources. A failure to meet the desired results could have serious repercussions on the whole life-cycle of the business.

What’s it got to offer?

MVP serves as the test version. Since there isn’t much expected of an MVP, even if the user response is a critical one initially, adjustments could be introduced at a later stage. The stakes are relatively low with an MVP so you get a fair bit of leeway in case it flops in the first instance.

Value Proposition

If you’re going to test out an idea, then you better be sure of its viability. An MVP allows you to do just that. In an MVP you are compelled to focus on the most inherent and basic building blocks of your product. In that manner, you’re bound to consider the full scope of your vision.

Examine it from every aspect and make a case of what you’re trying to offer to the end-user through an MVP. Based on all this foreknowledge you could set your targets precisely and make the best use of your time and money! Custom mobile application development stands to benefit immensely with this approach.

Market demand Evaluation

You can’t be sure of how the people will receive your product even if you’ve done your homework well. Many mobile app developers have had a reality check in a harsh way. That could be avoided with an MVP. Got slated for your product first time? Don’t be alarmed! You get a few more go’s to put everything back in order. And in each new go, you learn more and more about the user-expectations.

It would be a crushing experience to actually make a product and then find out there is no demand for it in the market. Now imagine, if there was a way to collect useful information about market-demand before the product launch. MVP is the answer! Be it a noteworthy idea or one that needs to be scrapped as soon as it’s possible, MVP would prove advantageous to your business on the whole.

MVP means minimal rework

The end-users are more concerned about the core features of your product. Many users are simply put-off by the copious amount of complementary features. With an MVP, you get to err on the side of caution by simply exhibiting the basic functionality. And a battle-field is always the best place to test your armor.

Without overlaying your product with fringe features, you can save the trouble of redeveloping it all over again, if by some misfortune your product was scorned at! An MVP allows your to tread as per the norms of what’s acceptable and the amount of rework is always minimal.

Early customer-relations

When you develop a product MVP, you can be sure of one thing – establishing a customer-base of ‘curious early-adopters’. These are the people who’re always on the lookout of what’s new in the industry of their concern. When your MVP is out, these will be the first to give you their feedback and it’s often a well-calculated one.

These people are much more forgiving than ‘early majority’ and would gladly help rectify what needs to be. You could take their suggestions and look to work on them in your next model. Being very learned in recent trends, they offer the ideal approach to market your product. When you think of mobile app development, this

Get a Perspective

For all the attractions and plenty of benefits that an MVP has to offer, it might come as a surprise, that a number of products can do without one. If you know what you’re making and it doesn’t have much room for twisting and tinkering with, then you can forgo the MVP stage. The key thing is obviously, it’ll “differ from product to product”.

A fine example could be demonstrated with mobile app development services that necessitate an MVP, say an e-commerce app. These are apps with high-end features and a large amount of database involving hundreds of thousands of products. The chances of encountering bugs and crashes in these are very high. Plus, there’s the app UI/UX aspect.

The more the users, the more suggestions you’re going to get. There would be a sea of views as to how people would like to use a cart, compare products and make payments. You’ll need to carefully take stock of such issues and then give your best shot through the MVP. Keep doing that until all pieces come together to complete the puzzle.

But not all apps would be high-end and feature-rich. A News app, for instance, will just work around the core function i.e. fetch news and show it to the user. It doesn’t take too much effort to crack the code as to what’s the best way to display the news to the user. Figure out a way and stick to it.

The end-users here aren’t overly concerned about the presentation, they’d like to open the app, and read the news. As long as they’re getting that, they’ll stay with you. So going through an MVP phase to develop these kinds of apps isn’t all that necessary. Even if improvements are needed, they could be introduced without too much trouble here.

When to break free from MVP and start building a fully-fledged product?

The purpose behind MVP is to showcase the core functionalities of a product. If that’s met with appreciation, then you have to move forward and introduce additional features that complement the core ones. But for how long?

It’s best not to wait out for too long. Watch out for these 2 things: the “personal vision” of your product and “user-feedback”. If you’re getting thumbs up at both ends, then it’s time to go big. From a mobile app development company’s perspective, this is the time set about developing their app.

You never want to fall into the ugly trap of chasing perfection. In business-world, it’s often said that there is no such thing as perfect and a product will always have more or less room for perfection. Instead release your product as a beta version. PlayStore employs that practice. That way the users know that the product/app is in the testing phase and they may encounter a few bugs or glitches.

However, what happens with being hell-bent on creating an ‘all-immaculate product’ is you end up overpowering the core with other rich features. That can lead to a shift in the original core functionality. Consequently, what you get in the end shares little resemblance with what you had in mind when you embarked on the project. And guess what? You may not be finished with your MVP yet. Such is the obsession with perfection.

Final Verdict

That MVP has helped a number of businesses, in particular, mobile app development companies, in a revolutionary way is undeniable. The notion of MVP’s potential to deliver successful product launch is gaining more and more consensus. Whether the product/app you’re developing would benefit from an MVP depends entirely on the nature of it.

If the app is feature-rich and going to be doled out globally, then yes, an MVP would do more good than harm. But if the app is just going to have a handful of features alongside the core, then you could spare the trouble of going through an MVP.

To sum it all up, it’s the end-user that determines the success and failure of your product. It’s worth reiterating the opening thoughts here – if you were to be the sole user of your product, then your idea of its final prototype would cause no trouble whatsoever,

but if you’re marketing the same product to any number of people, then it’s worth considering what they’re expecting from it. So to solve your MVP conundrum – think, consider and act!