Sep 29th, 2024
How Savvy Startups Succeed with MVP Development
Data shows that 90% of startups fail because they don’t understand how to use an MVP, highlighting the importance of its implementation for reducing costs and increasing success rates. MVP Development (Minimum Viable Product) is an unparalleled way to test your product idea, gain valuable feedback from users, and find product market fit early on.
Startups have used MVPs for decades, primarily because they lacked resources early-on to build full-fledged products. But MVP development has turned out to be a winning strategy for software companies large and small to build sticky, desirable products that delight users.
If you are a large company with access to resources startups may not have, you might consider outsourcing development of your next MVP. Outsourcing software development comes with its own benefits and risks, so it’s important to fully understand all facets before committing.
What is an MVP?
A Minimum Viable Product is like a prototype. Put simply, it is a basic iteration of your product that allows users to access the core functionality without a lot of bells and whistles. Ideally, it can be built quickly and encompasses only one or two features.
The advantages of developing an MVP are that you don’t need to pour a lot of resources into its development, and you can get it out the door and into the hands of users quickly so they can start giving you feedback. From there, you gather data about how they are using the product, if the product is going in the right direction, and what additional features you could add to improve it.
Should you use a partner for MVP development?
When you partner with a software development services provider to build your MVP, you are potentially freeing up your devs to work on other concerns. This might be extremely beneficial if your engineers are already tied up working on existing products and features. It is especially useful if the new thing you want to build is a blue-sky idea, or a little off-the-wall, and you’re very unsure about its feasibility.
Outsourcing MVP development might feel counterintuitive you may pay more for the extra development help in the short-term. However, if it allows your existing debs to keep their focus on the existing products that make up the core of your business, you will likely save yourself money in the long term by not compromising those important features.
Other Benefits of Outsourcing Your MVP Development include:
- Access to Specialists
- Fast Turnaround
- Cost Reduction
- Experience
- Scalability
The downside of outsourcing your MVP development is that you open yourself and your business up to risk. Allowing external parties to access your codebase or user data is risky and should be done with care. Always vet any potential partners with an eye for integrity, especially when it comes to data security and complying with privacy regulations.
Considering Outsourcing MVP Development?
“90% of startups fail due to poor MVP use, underscoring its role in cutting costs and boosting success”.
Importance of Scalability in MVP Development
While an MVP is meant to be a quick-and-dirty way to test your product, it is not meant to be thrown away as a prototype would. If the MVP is successful, it will become the core of your entire business, so make sure you build it with flexibility and scalability in mind.
This doesn’t mean you need to go all out and set up AWS cloud storage and a lot of complicated regression testing but it does mean that you should build in a way that will allow you to add those things later if you need them.
Essential Steps in a Startup MVP Development Process
If you’ve never built an MVP before, you might be tempted to just jump in and start coding. But there are quite a few steps that any startup needs to take before the actual building can begin. These steps might slow down the process, but they will speed up development and allow you to get to product market fit much more quickly.
- Define Your Goals: Who is your ideal user? Why do they need this product? What do you hope to help them achieve?
- Do Market Research: Identify and study your competition. What are they doing well? What could you do better? Is there a gap in the market that you think you could fill?
- Identify Core Features: Write down the main thing(s) that your product will do. Keep the list short and focus on only the essentials.
- Create a User Flow: How will the user navigate your product? This doesn’t just mean the application itself, but the entire user journey through your company’s ecosystem. Where did they discover this product? How are they onboarded? Where does this product fit into the overall scheme of what your company offers?
- Design the User Interface (UI): Keep the user in mind. Make the interface as bare bones, functional, and easy to navigate as possible.
- Select a Tech Stack: Choosing the right tech stack is crucial but remember that it’s not always possible to know exactly what you will need at this stage. Aim for a tech stack that is flexible rather than perfect.
- Development: It’s finally time to build. Keep agile principles in mind and try to establish best practices early on. Set up automated testing and deployment. At least sketch out some unit tests. Add analytics trackers so you can gather data on how the product is being used.
- Gather Feedback: After you release your feature or product, immediately begin gathering data. The idea here is that once you know how users are actually responding to your product, you will go back to the beginning of this list and start the next iteration.
Bottom Line
An MVP is a valuable tool for getting to product market fit quickly and efficiently. As long as your goals are well-defined and you keep gathering user feedback top of mind throughout this process, you will find it to be a low-cost and effective way to test your product ideas and launch new features.
