Minimum Viable Product development can seem somewhat tricky, especially for a business which is trying to implement this system for the first time. The concept of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is generally used to refer to a digital product or a software, although it can also be applied to various real-world products as well.
A Minimum Viable Product refers to a software with only the bare essentials included as features, which is then sent over as a tester to the public in order to figure out the improvements that can be made to the core concept. Steam Early Access and crowdfunding on Kickstarter and/or Indiegogo can be labeled as Minimum Viable Product examples (in fact, Google and Dropbox started initially through this practice).
In order to ease the process of MVP development, here are the steps a company should take in order to make the most of this system.
- Form a software with only the bare essentials: The ‘minimum’ aspect of an MVP should be taken quite seriously. For a software to succeed in the market, the general reception to its core components should be positive before the company proceeds to build on this concept. If a firm fails to follow its first step and decides to add a host of other features to this public prototype, then it will be harder to point out exactly what is wrong with the software.
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- Build upon customer feedback your MVP receives: By sending an MVP to a target group, a company can receive feedback regarding various aspects of the product, including suggestions on how it can be improved and used in different avenues as well. This is one of the major positives of MVP – the company can find out if a product’s core features can be used more effectively in other avenues, and then shift the production to accommodate that particular avenue(s) without much hassle. This would be more difficult and highly expensive if this feedback was instead received on an almost-finished piece of software.
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- Optimize your product and development process: Using a Minimum Viable Product is a great way to experiment with different features and testing it with the company’s core market. By doing this, regular errors can be omitted from the development process and certain steps can be taken to optimize future products. In this way, a company can figure out ways to add to the experience they’re crafting for their customers.
If these steps are taken diligently, then a company can release a great product on the market that has been shaped by customer feedback and will have guaranteed success with its core demographic on the market.
