How to Plan a Minimum Viable Product: A Step-By-Step Guide

Building an MVP like Airbnbs will take around three and a half months at a cost of 35K. In this case, real metrics are much more valuable to prove Airbnb’s assumptions. This step is intended to squeeze your first sprint feature list down to the juice nectar. And, if you should build an MVP, to decide which features should be built into your MVP.

If you have gone through all the essential stages you’ll receive relevant feedback. This is why even if you start with this sort of MVP, you may still need to invest your time in a “real” MVP to check technical feasibility. The Pareto principle may come in handy when deciding on your product’s core feature. According to the book Blue Ocean Strategy by Renée Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim, back in 2004, 86% of launched businesses accounted for 62% of total revenue but only 39% of total profits. Meanwhile, a small number of companies operating in the blue ocean were responsible for the major part of total profits.

Steps to Create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Now that you’ve determined your MVP plans align with your business objectives, you can start thinking through the specific solutions you want your product to offer users. These solutions, which you might write up in user stories, epics, or features, do not represent the product’s overall vision—only subsets of that vision. Remember, you can develop only a small amount of functionality for your MVP. The sooner real users can start using the product, the better. Their feedback will show whether there’s an interest in the kind of app you want to develop or whether developing it would be a complete waste of time and money. And so they’re probably giving you a long list of potential features they think can solve the problem, as opposed to spending a lot of time just talking about what their problem is.

It allows you to save money and time you would spend on developing your own technology. This methodology is suitable for online services, the ultimate goal of which is to automate solving problems of the target audience. At the initial stages of implementation, you manually provide the service. The MVP product shouldn’t obligatory have a fancy design, which can distract users’ attention from understanding the product value. Though, the UI and UX should be intuitive and easy to follow.

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However, adding more features is the wrong approach because doing so undermines an MVP’s philosophy. A typical problem that startups face is an abundance of product features that aren’t necessary for a minimum viable product. That’s why when you create an MVP app, you should distribute functionality into several updates, starting with just the essentials for the initial launch. Full-fledge applications require a lot of time to develop. According to McKinsey, successful innovators rely on small launches where a product is tested and refined in a real market setting. This helps both drive your product to market faster and make meaningful changes.

A lot of founders, once they’ve figured out how to build something, fall in love with it. The broken thing is not the mechanic, and it’s not the fact that they need to screw something in. Continue improving on your solution until it actually solves the problem. The next one is, talk to your users, any of them, after you’ve launched this MVP, and get feedback. This is one that’s also extremely common mistake, because most founders in their heads have a idea of what they wanna build. And so they kind of have this weird feeling that if I haven’t built the full thing yet, getting feedback on the shitty initial thing is kind of useless.

Let’s take a dive in into these 5 steps:

Fast release gives you the possibility to test today’s market and get an edge over competitors. It also helps to avoid any costly failures, as you will have the opportunity to make sure that your idea will really be in demand. In the early stages of developing ecommerce mobile app features a product idea, start with a low-fidelity MVP so you can minimize costs while collecting feedback. High-fidelity MVPs come once your startup has sufficient data and validation, which justifies spending money to create prototypes or functioning software.

And so your three week plan turns into a three month plan. If you write shit down, at least you can be honest with yourself that you’re changing your spec all the time. And I like to kind of distinguish between iterating and pivoting.

-steps to building a Minimum Viable Product

Through MVPs, you get a better understanding of product-market fit. The cost of creating a minimum viable product in 2023 can range from $20,000 to $150,000 or more. The necessary resources and effort to develop an MVP depend on its complexity and scope. Remember that MVP development is an iterative process, and the steps may not always be linear.

• It means you should take an opinion poll, ask the right people, and obtain information from them to create the portrait of your ideal consumer.
• It’s helpful, when you talk to people, interact with people that they can refer back to something.
• Easily keep everyone aligned on priorities, centralize all your customer feedback, and always know what to build with confidence.
• Also make sure your product is unique if there are already existing competitors.

The MVP did one thing, it connected cab drivers with iPhone owners in San Francisco and let them pay for the ride with a credit card. It was enough to see if people were ready for a totally new taxi experience. Its main goal was to check if people would book the apartment.

Preparatory stage: define the basic principles of creating an MVP

To know that, gather feedback and see if it can be scaled. Because if the product cannot be scaled, it won’t be suitable for the larger customer base. Additionally, when you begin your marketing campaign, knowing your audience will give you a headstart on creating content that speaks to them. Before you start to create anything in your business, you must start with market research. We are an international software development company and certified partner. This way your MVP will focus on the most important areas as it cannot cover them all.