A Guide to build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

An MVP building focuses on one idea, and it does not include any other function. The approach of the MVP belongs to the ideology of a lean startup: building the right product with a minimal budget in a given time. Having some of the high priority, but minimum features can reduce the cost of MVP. The MVP allows the app to be tested, with minimal risk.

What is an MVP

An MVP is a basic, launchable version of the product that supports minimal yet must-have features). An MVP is created with an intent to enable faster time to market, attract early adopters and achieve product-market fit from early on.

Minimum Viable Product, is exactly what it says: the product in its smallest, least featureful avatar that has just the basics, and only those functionalities, that demonstrate your product.

Purpose of an MVP

• Pull the ideas based on experience;
• Time and money save;
• Solving one of the user problems;
• Getting feedback from loyal customers;
• Evaluation of product development.

Building an MVP implies finding the right balance between what your business is offering to users, and what users actually need. The purpose of the MVP is to test the hypothesis by minimizing errors. An MVP helps in collecting maximum quality feedback, by targeting specific groups, or types of users.

How to start it

First call. Contact our manager and tell us about your idea and project.

Technical specification. By analyzing your hypotheses, ideas, and the capabilities of our team, we will work together to create a technical specification for your project. Based on time spent and various risks, we will evaluate the project and tell the cost of all the work, after getting all the details.

Engineering. Our developers will start developing MVP and think about user flow of your product. User flow is the path that user needs to walk through to get the best user experience. It is necessary to calculate all possible functions and routes that the user will use in product, and then select the key functions from these. That’s meaning the function will directly solve the user problem.

Concept. Designers will create a concept first so that we can get your opinion for future edits. It sounds corny, but this stage is very important to development. This is a visual image of your idea and a direct instruction for creating it

Feedback. To get feedback from users, we need to conduct various tests and quizzes. MVP provides users opinion about the product, which is important for further development.

Product tests. MVP requires constant testing throughout the developmenнщг. An internal team of testers is enough for alpha testing, but for beta testing, you will need to find outsiders from among potential users.

Start. MVP Launch provides valuable information. Statistics, behavior data, and user reviews-allow you to understand the project’s perspective, come up with new ideas and product development strategies based on facts, not assumptions.

Minimum Viable Product Examples

Dropbox. Before launching Dropbox, the co-founder and CEO Drew Houston, was aware that there were tons of existing cloud-storage startups. Therefore, he decided to create an effective MVP based on the video, explaining how to use the application. The video played a crucial role in reaching out to the right audience, as it received a large number of views and comments. Dropbox even received 70k email addresses from potential users in a single day, which gave the company a green light to launch the product.

Spotify music player. As a startup in 2006, Spotify was founded on some key assumptions — that people are happy to stream (rather than own) music, that labels and artists are willing to let people do so legally, and that fast and stable streaming is technically feasible. But putting MVP in the hands of real users — friends and family — and they quickly got the answers they needed. People absolutely loved the product (or more like, what the product can become) This running prototype helped convince music labels and investors and, well, the rest is history.

By now you are ready to embark upon your first MVP Development journey. Remember it need not have to be perfect! Just follow the described steps and strategies to build an MVP for your product.