Launching a minimum viable product (MVP) is like plunging your toes into your goal consumer pool before you take the plunge fully. Many people swear as smart business practices by them, citing the importance of looking before you run.
But the idea of an MVP is less enamored by others. After all, who, as a consumer, needs an incomplete unfinished product that will solve their problems to the absolute minimum degree possible? Can launching an MVP later hurt your business chances of success?
So what makes an MVP a good idea (or even a bad one?). Let’s find out!
WHAT IS A MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT (MVP)?
Well, your MVP or Minimum Viable Product is your product’s base. It is more like an iced part of the fresh cupcake which you just baked, or the bread and butter of your software sandwich. So, in simpler terms, it is the prototype that only holds the features necessary to solve the main problem which you’re targeting!
MVPs are a wonderful way to get the impression you’re looking to enter the market. Until pouring resources into something no one wants, you will see if there is a market for your company. Nine out of ten start-ups generally fail, and 42% of them have failed because their product was not needed. Therefore, an MVP illustrates a lack of consumer needs before using additional resources. It’s a way to test your theories and see if you need to give them responses.
Minimum viable products often make it more affordable & manageable to develop a product. They will help the team to stop creeping apps. Because all features have to be important to the core goal, foreign and needless features are avoided that weigh down the product.
ARGUMENT AGAINST THE MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT?
Well, this argument states that launching an MPV in the market does nothing but hurt the company’s standing in the market. This is fairly simple to understand – the product launched in very basic, and it only does a bare formality or the bare minimum when it comes to fixing the customer’s pain point. Hence, it doesn’t get received well by the customers, and it doesn’t retain any of them!
This makes sense, except that this is not what is meant by a good minimum viable product. It’s not a half-built product that really only acts as a proof of concept — you’ve got a prototype for that. A minimum viable product is a validation method for your hypotheses and a point of departure for your company.
But behind the concerns about MVPs is the truth. If badly done, minimum viable products may misrepresent the ultimate goal you see for your product. This means that any market insight it provides may be incorrect, resulting in the risk of targeting incompatible clients for your project.
DECONSTRUCTING THE MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT?
In the interpretation of the terms ‘minimum’ and ‘viable’ are the key elements via which you can understand the difference between a good MVP and a bad one.
In the term ‘Good MVP’, minimum doesn’t refer to the product being ‘lazy’ or ‘settled for’. In fact, it refers to the simplest form of your future product. In fact, it the the ‘minimum’ part of the MVP which forces your team to boil down the product to have only the core functions which it needs to have to solve any problem, in the most elegant and effective way possible. It is the bar to reach for to make your product be able to call a ‘product!’
The thing is, a product can often struggle to be ‘viable’ if it is ‘minimum,’ and viability is just as essential to a good MVP. ‘Viable’ means the product can be used. This guarantees that the product does as it is meant to fix a problem or function. It is not possible to have a product that doesn’t work or can’t fit the consumer’s needs.
And that’s the crux of what constitutes a good minimum viable product: a release that includes only as of the core of what it’s going to become, but a center that’s still fit for consumer usage.
NOW, WHAT MAKES A GOOD MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT?
A strong MVP is a product that performs and can be used. It’s solid — not vaporware or a proven dummy product. Because of reductive thoughts, many companies have struggled on the MVP front; they are creating the bare minimum features they can ‘ get away with ‘ or an unfinished product ‘ just for feedback. ‘
That line of thought is cutting corners when a true MVP is not cheating on talent. When you introduce an MVP that has the ability to fix the issue you want it to answer, its usability will not turn away interested customers. We just want to solve their problem after all.
It doesn’t mean that it can be made or viewed apathetically just because it’s an MVP. You need to carry out research on the market and know who to reach with your product. You need to write stories about customers and find the point of consumer frustration you want to rectify. And to do this, you need to carefully select which features are necessary.
Tanthetaa, one of the startups that builds MVP solutions says this about their development approach
To begin, we divide the cycle of creating an app into distinct tasks. Once more broken down into smaller tasks, each of these is carried out concurrently after being assigned to our teams.
– Tanθ
Bells & Whistles
Badly done, an MVP does not really help you evaluate the market, draw compatible buyers, or provide you with a working model to expand on your idea. But, well done, an MVP will help you save time, money, and start building a customer base.
Your product is a good MVP at a time when it solves only one specific problem. Growing from it is a starting point for you. You will later build on your minimally viable product to improve the way it solves the same predicament.
But you release a fine, simple product for now. You demonstrate the core value that your product will always retain to find out if it addresses a pain point that customers are facing. But it doesn’t have all the whistles and bells.