Starting a software project with an MVP
We’ve all had great ideas for the next big thing at some point in our lives. The difficult part after having a great idea is validating it and making sure it’ll work before investing massive amounts of money in it.
What if there was a good way of validating your idea? A way of testing it with the right audience before you fully invest in it?
Well, there is. It’s called a minimum viable product, or MVP.
So, what is an MVP?
An MVP is essentially just the minimum set of features that you might need to test a solution with an early customer base, with a focus on establishing business value. Customers then give you feedback that helps you develop your product further. They might report bugs that need fixing, crucial features that are missing or user experiences that aren’t quite right. This helps you to stay customer focussed with the feature set that gets added to your product. It also helps to make sure that you don’t spend money excessively on a product that might not be perfect for the customers you are targeting.
Why do we need to do this?
The main purpose of an MVP is to gain an understanding of the interest in your product without fully developing it. If you can gauge market interest as soon as possible, you can avoid developing a product that might not succeed in the market. On the other hand, if your product does generate interest, you can align your product with the direction of that interest and make sure that you develop exactly what your customers are interested in. Think of it this way: an online store doesn’t really need a wishlist feature to be successful at the start – it’s something that can be added on later. The business value of the store is still there without that feature.
In our view, an MVP is the best way to get started with any software project to make sure it goes in the right direction from the start, adhering to your business rules.
What isn’t an MVP?
You’ll often read that an MVP is just the minimum set of features that make a product work. It isn’t.
An MVP should be the minimum set of features required to provide insight into the business viability of your product. If you just develop a login page, your MVP is useless. However, if you deliver an online store without a wish list, you can gauge the interest in your system and develop a wish list if your users want it.
The benefits of building an MVP
Building an MVP has many benefits. Here’s a few big ones:
- Save time, save money: You can release your product or platform to market much sooner with an MVP approach. With feedback from your users, you can build additional features. Because you go to market quicker, you spend less time on initial development, and therefore release your platform after incurring less costs.
- Understanding your users’ needs: Going to production as early as possible and collecting as much information as possible allows you to evaluate which features your customers are enjoying the most, which features need improvement and what you need to add to your product. This also lets you understand the features that your customers need, and not just the features that they are enjoying.
- Early adoption and customer relationships: In addition to the valuable feedback you’ll get, your early customers will tell other people about your product. Engaging with users creates a great customer relationship and enables your business to be more customer oriented.
- Focus: If your users have informed you of the things they like, dislike and what features they think are missing from your product, you can focus your development efforts on the things that matter, thereby improving your service offering.
- Minimise risk: Great ideas which are executed poorly can be incredibly costly in terms of time and money. By releasing early and releasing often, you avoid mistakes that could be very costly to your business.
MVP Examples
Let’s take a look at some examples of companies that started with MVPs, and then scaled to a degree where they can change the world.
Airbnb
Airbnb started off with two people living in a loft apartment. They started a business with the idea of providing accommodation for attendees of a local design conference. Soon enough, they had a few paying guests. From there, their business expanded into the massive success it is today.
Amazon
Back in the 90s, Amazon started off selling books at low prices via a (very) simple website. They took on brick and mortar companies that sold books the old fashioned way, and they made a success of it. From there, they developed their brand into one of the most successful retail companies of today.
Uber
The first Uber ride was requested in 2010 in San Francisco. They started small – they targeted iPhone users in the city who needed a ride and automagically charged the credit card account of the customer. For its time, the app was revolutionary. Two years later, they launched internationally. Today, Uber is one of the most popular ride sharing apps in the world.
These are just a few examples of MVPs that became massively popular. A lot of other MVPs weren’t so lucky – but that’s the point of an MVP. Test your idea and validate it in the market before going all in.
Devliance’s MVP Offering
If you’d like to build a digital product, feel free to have a chat with us.
Take a look at our consultation process to get an idea of how we help you establish a clear picture of your digital needs and build a product that matches those needs perfectly.
With years of experience in software development, digital transformation and cloud deployments, we’ll guide you through the process of building, testing, scaling and extending your MVP. Our approach aims at releasing features that deliver business value early and often, resulting in fast iterations that you can gather data from to improve your service offering. Our Agile way of working allows us to respond to changing customer needs at any time in the duration of a project.
Get in touch with us today to get your project started!