• What is a MVP

• Why Develop an MVP

• MVP Examples

• Building the MVP in 5 steps

• How Droomwork can help you build MVP

• FAQ

 

What is a MVP?

An MVP (Minimal Viable Product) is  a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback on future product development according to wikipedia. The term MVP was coined by Frank Robinson in 2001 but was popularized by Eric Ries and Steve Blank.The idea of MVP was centered around building usable product for users, and validating business hypothesis and to test a particular business model to customers to see if it resonates with the market rather than executing on non-viable business model.

 

Why Develop An MVP?

 

Developing an MVP is more like laying a foundation before building a house. There is a probability that not building an MVP of your product will lead to building what users don’t want or solutions that the market does not need.

 

• Right Product Build - Starting lean can help you build a product with much depth than having a full fledged product packed with features. Having a fully fledged product may cause you to miss some details during product development. An MVP would lead you to building what the user wants.

• Time - to - Market : This is the time it takes for your product to go to market. MVP is designed to reduce the time to launch your product to your target audience as building an MVP should not take more than 3months. An MVP makes you launch early.

• Reduce Cost - Planning an MVP reduces cost of development since you aint integrating all the features of the product. This validates that you don’t need millions of dollars to launch your product or to solve that problem.

 

MVP EXAMPLES

Stripe - Stripe is a US based payment processor that has processed billions of dollars worth over $74 billion. But before it got to this height, its name was first /dev/payment. Back in its early days, the founders integrated the payment processor for their client by going to their offices.

 

Airbnb - This is another example, in their early days, they had no map view feature, no payment system, you had to pay the host in person.

 

Building The MVP In 6 Steps

 

 

1. Define a problem statement : Write down the problem you want your product to solve. In doing so, you might end up finding out that the solution you have doesn't meet market demand.

2. Conduct User Research : User Research is the act of conducting an interview, surveys etc. It can be broken down in two categories which are; Primary Research - Is conducting interviews, surveys and usability study. Secondary Research - refers to research done by others mostly found in books or articles.

3. Create a hypothesis Statement : Hypothesis statement is an educated guess about what you think the solution to the problem is. You can use the if/ then format or "we believe" format. For e.g  " We believe that a product tour would educate them about the app usage so that he can hire dog walkers" 

4. Define & Prioritize Features : You can brainstorm on features that would help solve the problem. Make a list of every possible feature you can think of. After that, prioritize them using the feature matrix format below with your team. Score each feature on the scale of 1-5. For e.g Score how hard a certain feature will acquire a new  customer on a scale of 1-5. Higher score would equate to ease. The higher the score the easier the feature brings new customers.

5. Build the MVP/ Launch - Setup a team of developers & designers to help bring your product to reality. The engineers would develop the prioritized features.

6. Iterate - After launch, collect feedback from your existing customers. You can use tools like Canny, Hotjar for surveys. With those feedbacks you can build customer centric features using the data provided by your users.

 

How Droomwork Can Help You Build MVP

The process of building MVP at Droomwork is similar to the flow above. WE start with the problem our client wants to solve and develop it into an MVP to check for feasibility.

 

FAQs 

 

Q : How long should it take to build an MVP?

 

A : In as much as building an MVP should take weeks not months. The recommended timeline is 3-4 months.

 

Q : How to ask feedback Questions/Surveys

 

A : Identify the key thing you want to learn from your users. The question you want to ask, would it help solve the problem you want to solve?

 

Q : What Makes A Good MVP?

 

 A : It is the one that fulfills its purpose i.e testing the initial business idea, costing cost and making product launches faster.

 

 Q : How much does it cost to Build a MVP?

 

 A : This would really depend on the Prioritize feature of the product. However, the average price ranges from $30,000 - $50,000