Solve the most painful problems first
Focusing on solving your audience’s most painful pain points is the best way to minimize risks when imagining a new product. Despite seeming very simple, this is a very difficult task.
We don’t use products because they have a set of features. We use them because those features help us solve problems. Think about the reasons you use products. You probably wouldn’t say you value Google’s search for its speed and amount of results it gives you. Instead, you’d say that it helps you find the information you are looking for very quickly.
You should focus on addressing the most important problems instead of building the best features. A customer will forgive you if your product doesn’t meet their full needs, but only if you successfully eliminate their top pain points effectively. If the value you’re providing is worth it, they will put up with missing features, bugs and glitches.
MVP is too risky
A Minimum Viable Product is a product with just enough features to be able to be used by customers and get feedback.
It’s a way of reducing the scope of a product to get it into the hands of customers faster than a finished product. This allows the company to get feedback from customers much earlier in the development process. But the MVP also must be a set of features that provides customer value and customer delight. You need enough customer value/delight so that the product stands out from alternative solutions. Customers must also find the product valuable enough to choose it over competitors’ products.
It is common for MVP to be misinterpreted. Numerous products targeting the same audience have failed in one company and succeeded in another. By assuming “minimum” means releasing a minimal set of features, you run the risk of releasing products that are below the minimum-essential solution, creating a false perception that the product failed. In general, this results from a lack of understanding of the problem and due to the difficulty in gauging precisely which set of features should be included in a “minimum”.
Because there are too many subjective factors involved, it’s too risky to scope down features to a minimum viable product (MVP). Moreover you won’t be able to fully understand why the product fails as the conclusions, assumptions and hypothesis will be based on biased data that will not only keep you in the dark, but could potentially cause you to reach incorrect conclusions, increasing your chances of failure.
After defining and launching several MVPs over the years, I want to explore what could better replace an MVP in order to reduce the risks associated, and create a repeatable process that will reduce confusion and increase the likelihood to reach a successful initial product.
Use EVA not MVP
What is EVA? Here’s how it works: EVA stands for Essential Value Achieved and it refers more to a mindset.
An essential feature or feature set are the features that are solving the problem you meant to solve in the most basic way. More often than you think you need to ask yourself again and again what is it that i’m trying to solve. What’s the essential component that will solve the problem? This needs to be revisited over and over as you refine the problem and the solution. Most of the time, the solution provided solves a bigger pain than intended, as you and your team think about the bigger picture and the future of the product. Unnoticeably we tend to aim for product completeness as we have this urge to always build the full vision. The sparkling perfect product.
Getting to market quickly means balancing a need to thoroughly validate and solve the problem with a need to get to market quickly. But, we don’t know what we don’t know, and our own assumptions can sometimes be our biggest barriers to success.
The main problem with MVP is that we don’t fully know when you reach the minimum viable product. Have I chosen the features that will bring the most value to the user and remove the most pain points? Are there any unnecessary features that I scoped down? Where do I draw the line between “must haves” vs “nice to have”. Getting it right is tricky.
In short, there is no line. In reality, it is an area that extends between two other areas.
Imagine that you have three areas stacked on top of each other. The different areas represent the product’s completeness and your confidence levels in its success. (see chart below)
The bottom area represents the failure zone, indicating that if the scope of the product is too narrow, it will fail due to the lack of value provided to the user.
The upper area is the success zone. It is important that the product is positioned in this area before it is launched. The problem is that there is a third area. An area in which you are uncertain whether you have achieved or not the essential value. This is the risk area.
This zone represents the confidence levels in the scope of the solution you provide. As your confidence in providing essential value to your users decreases, this zone will grow larger. (Fig 1, Fig 2)
Your main strategy for decreasing the height of the risk zone is to increase confidence levels in your product scope through research and data collection. Consequently, EVA will always be higher than MVP in order to minimize the risk of not achieving the essential solution for success.
Fig 1
Fig 2
Additional guidelines to minimize uncertainties
Here are some guiding principles to help you decrease uncertainties and feel more comfortable when launching new products.
#1 Feel the pain
A solution should begin with a deep understanding of the problem through customer discovery. Take the time to fully understand the crucial pain points and workflows of your audience. Examine current solutions and determine whether they solve the problem adequately. As a result, you are then able to identify a set of core issues that you want to solve with your product. It is important to understand the ecosystem surrounding a new product when you are thinking about creating one.
If a handful of people agree to use your solution in theory, you’re on the right track. Most likely, you will receive false-positive feedback, where someone states they will use your product when in reality, they will not.
#2 Simplicity through rapid experiments
Once you have determined there is a problem to solve and that solving it will be impactful, you must determine what is the essential value you need to provide. To develop an effective solution, you’ll need to provide a core set of features that solves the main problem in a competitive manner.
In many cases, we don’t test new ideas because we believe we already know what to do. By using an experimental approach, you can overcome blind spots and stay ahead of your competitors. It is always a good idea to test alternatives as well, regardless of how certain you are that your first solution is the most appropriate and easiest to implement.
Make sure your solution is as simple as possible. It’s important not to end up with a great solution that cannot be understood or used by others.
Make sure your product is “Simple to understand and easy to use”
#3 Differentiators
There are many factors that can serve as differentiators. An example of this may be the presence of delightful moments in the product.
The features that make a product delightful don’t have to be major. In some cases, a small change to the user interface can have a significant impact on the customer’s experience. You can probably improve the customer journey with a few easy and quick measures.
By removing features from a product and only including the “must-haves,” you are going to end up with an inferior product. Providing exceptional customer service may also be a differentiator.
#4 It’s ready, don’t wait
Once you’re reasonably confident that your product provides the essential value to your market, launch it.
As you build out features based on assumptions, you reduce your ability to iterate on real-world feedback and real-world user behavior. Put it in front of real users as soon as possible, and monitor the behavior for ongoing improvements.
You may want to release the product slowly, increasing the speed over time to minimize the chance of bugs, glitches, and uncertainties in the beginning. (Fig 3)
It takes time for feature usage and engagement measures to build up. Before and after alpha release, qualitative surveys/interviews are the fastest way to get early reactions. Depending on the information they provided in the entry survey, you can determine whether or not you addressed their biggest pain points.
Fig 3
Final thoughts
Throughout my career as a product, I’ve observed numerous products fail in one company and succeed in another, while targeting the same audience. From my experience, this is mostly due to the lack of deep understanding of the problem while also not achieving the essential solution. It’s too risky to scope down features to the minimums (MVP) as there are too many subjective factors included.
Bottom line: Aim for above minimums = EVA (essential Value Achieved) to secure a success in your product launch, while reducing the risk zone through consistent user interviews, UI changes, differentiators over competitors and monitoring user behavior.
