What is a minimum viable product and why your organization needs it?

The role of IT leaders is to align their efforts with vision and the strategy of the organization, striving to find and implement the right technology solutions that supports them. Most of the time IT Teams procures off the shelf solutions which are ready made products developed by software vendors and can be implemented and used in a short amount of time. Where off the shelf solutions might satisfy general needs and requirements it becomes very difficult to find niche business applications that might be required only for specific organizations. 

This is where IT Usually turns to developing their own technology products from the ground up. A process that historically has been very problematic. Going back to the traditional development process an enterprise might go through; typically, by the time needs are identified, requirements are gathered from various stakeholders, specs are created, coding, testing and launching is complete, the entire process might have taken a couple of years or more and the initial requirements might, the processes and the business landscape might have changed rendering the efforts useless.  This is where the need for MVPs rose. 

What is an MVP

An MVP or a minimum viable product is a basic version of the final product with only the essential bare bones functions. MVPs allow organizations building their own products to only build the core of the product which they can then test in the market (whether internal if the product is employee facing or externally if the product is customer focused) to see whether or not it has the potential to succeed. With the MVP and testing in-place IT teams can collect valuable feedback and insights that would help them further fine-tune the product or in some cases change change the development direction completely. 

image source: SteelKiwi

What are the benefits of building an MVP

Popularized by Eric Reis in his book the Lean Stratup the concept of MVP became very popular with starts and later adopted by Enterprise Organizations due to the following benefits: 

1. Release products to the market (internal/external) quicker
2. Organizations can save time and resources ensuring they only invest in projects that are likely to be successful. 
3. Verify product/market fit ensuring that what they are working on is actually appealing to potential users. 
4. Reduce  time and implementation costs
5. Unlike traditional development approaches building an MVP will allow you to work directly with the end customers, analyze their behaviors and preferences in order to improve the development of your product. 
6. It allows you to evaluate your product’s functionalities. You get information about what works and what does not work.
7. It allows organizations to avoid failures (and investment losses)
8. If they need to decide between multiple products or initiatives to invest in, get accurate and concrete data on where to fully invest their budget and energy. 
9. Identify a potential client based and find the product's early adopters.
10. Save time and money in end product development by not needing to conduct expensive market research.
11. You gain loyalty from your clients. They will value all the effort you are putting forth to make them happy.

How to define an MVP

To build an MVP you should properly define it, some questions you can ask to help you are:

1. Who are your target customers
2. What problems are they facing that you need to solve for them
3. Interview the end customers and try to see what they want vs. what they need
4. List all the features and ideas
5. Categorize all the elements/features and identify the ones that are the most relevant to your end customers
6. Draft the concept
7. Ask your stakeholders directly about their opinion
8. Take the feedback, review your concept and iterate. 

Some common mistakes when it comes to building an MVP

Although the idea and concept of a Minimum Viable Product looks pretty simple, many companies still misunderstand it. Some of the main issues are:

1. Cutting on key product features: when we talk about an elementary set of features, it does not mean that we can deliver an unfinished product or one that lacks functionality that would be expected or needed
2. Adding necessary features: You need to focus on the core value of the product, things that contribute to the success of it, instead of wasting time and resources on options that no one would ever use

Final Words

As we talked the Minimum Viable Product allows you to gain valuable insight about your idea from users with very little efforts allowing you to maximize your budget as a result. Any organization with a considerable push to developing their own products should consider having an MVP because it gives them the opportunity to test the product with actual users in the real market and obtain the necessary early feedback that makes the different between success and failure. 

Interested in starting your own product development efforts but are lacking the required resources? Sprintat is an offering where we provide you with a complete Agile Development team alongside the tools, processes and quality controls required to help you build, maintain and continuously optimize your software products/solutions. Sprintat helps you build applications your users will love using.