How to Craft Your Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?

Entrepreneurs often struggle with the challenge of knowing when their product is ready for market. You might have several assumptions about your idea, but until a customer is willing to pay for your product, those assumptions remain untested. How do you find the right balance between features and simplicity while ensuring the product meets customer expectations?

The concept of a Minimum Viable Business Product (MVBP) offers the perfect solution. By integrating your key assumptions into a simple, functional product that customers are willing to pay for, you reduce risks and maximize learning. The MVBP helps you test whether your product holds real market value while allowing customers to give you critical feedback.

Eric Ries, who popularize the term in his book The Lean Startup, describes the purpose of an MVP as the version of a new product that allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least amount of effort. The MVP is a good option when you want to release a product to the market as quickly as possible or test and idea with real users before investing a large budget for full development.

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Frank Robinson (who coined the term in 2001) explains the MVP as a solution that sits in between return of investment (ROI) and risk as shown in the quadrant. The main objective of an MVP is to reduce wasted time and effort by testing how the market responds to your idea before fully developing the product.

How To Define Your Minimum Viable Product?

Here are some strategic steps to make to know when your team has an MVP ready for launch:

1. Align your MVP with your business objectives

   Before deciding which features to include in your MVP, the first step is to ensure the product aligns with your team’s or company’s strategic goals. What are your current goals? Are you aiming for a specific revenue target in the next six months? Are your resources limited?

   It’s also essential to clarify the purpose of this MVP. For instance, is it intended to attract new users in a related market? If so, and that aligns with your business objectives, this MVP might be a good strategic fit.

   
   

2. Create a map of your ecosystem

   A business ecosystem map is a visual representation of all the different groups that will interact with your product. These groups may include various types of users specially if your product have different but complementary features.

   Take Amplitud for example, your company’s UX designer may be an user but so will be the product manager, data analytics team and IT team that helps implement the product.

   

   
   

3. Ensure the overall features align with your user needs

   Make a list of all the assumptions you've made about your product. For this step you can conduct user research

   
   

   • What are the core pain points the user is trying to solve using your product and will they be able to?

   • Is easy and clear to start using your product?

   • Does your product integrate seamlessly with your users routine if applicable?

     
     

4. Define the value proposition for each stakeholder

   What key benefit does each stakeholder in your ecosystem receive, and what are they willing to exchange for it? Identify the most significant challenges your users face and determine where you can provide the most value to address those pain points.

   
   

5. Simplify Your Product

   Prioritize the most critical user needs and choose the features that delivers just enough value for customers to pay for it but get the job done in order for the customer to think of it as valuable. Avoid over-complicating your product with unnecessary features that can be develop later.

   
   

Teams often use the term MVP without fully understanding its true purpose. Many mistakenly believe an MVP is simply the smallest version of a product, neglecting the crucial aspect of testing the business viability.

This confusion can also arise when teams mix up an MVP, which focuses on learning, with a Minimum Marketable Feature (MMF) or Minimum Marketable Product (MMP), which focus on earning. While this isn't inherently harmful, it can lead to teams prioritizing delivery over ensuring the product actually meets customer needs.

The main advantage of an MVP is that it allows you to gauge your customers' interest in your product without needing to fully develop it. The earlier you can determine whether your product will resonate with customers, the less time and money you'll invest in a product that may not succeed in the market. Additionally, launching quickly gives you a competitive edge, and a well-received MVP can attract potential investors, positioning your business for future growth.

PS: Our team at Apptimist Studio helps businesses with the planning, design, and execution of their plans. We help business owners and people with vision to execute their dreams and have beautiful, flawlessly working automated systems. Book a free discovery call with us here.

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Source: Minimum Viable Product (MVP) by Productboard

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