Here at Autonomous, our prospects often come to us with a product idea and a long wish list that’s exciting and shiny. Honestly, often it’s hard not to get swept away with their wave of enthusiasm. As exciting as new ideas are, we put on our tech consultant hat and guide the founder to build and test their product idea with the minimum effort required.
Enter MVP – Minimum Viable Product.
What Makes a Strong MVP?
An MVP is the first client-facing version of a product. This version will meet the absolute minimum feature requirement of a product for it to feel complete for your target customer – minus the bells and whistles. The requirements that this MVP needs to meet are:
- It must deliver value
- Allow you to gather feedback
By building an MVP, founders minimize risk through user-centric development. Consequently, this reduces costs and effort while maximizing returns through rapid prototyping and market validation. Ultimately, it gathers the data that validates value delivery—or reveals if you need to pivot.
Defining Your MVP Before You Build
To create a meaningful experience for yourself and your clients, make sure that you set clear expectations. You need a structured plan and predictability. Therefore, you should outline small actionable steps and test the accuracy of your assumptions every step of the way.
As long as you keep your user at the forefront of every decision, you will be able to launch successfully. In fact, having an MVP mindset is truly crucial for this entire process. As Frank Robinson once said:
“MVP is more than its definition. It’s more than a series of procedural steps. MVP is a mindset. It says, think big for the long term but small for the short term.” – Frank Robinson
The 5 Lessons Every MVP Builder Learns
Here are our lessons learned from building successful products. This serves as a great starting point for any would-be founder:
1. Establish a Value Proposition
Don’t spend the next few months building something irrelevant. Instead, put in the brainstorming sessions to articulate your value on paper. Ensure you identify your target market’s needs and address their specific pain points. You must know why your MVP is better than any current solutions.
2. Identify Assumptions and Unknowns
Make a list of everything you know and don’t know. Because the main assumptions of the business need validation, you must set metrics to measure them. The MVP should allow you to fill in the blanks. As a result, your first design will confirm if your initial research was correct.
3. Don’t Fall Down the Rabbit Hole
As soon as a product starts becoming tangible, new ideas start pouring in. You will want to add features and do more. STOP. Remember that less is more and perfection is the enemy of good. Get that first version out and set a strict time limit to launch.
4. Let Your Baby Fly the Nest
Remember that the job doesn’t end once you have turned your idea into a reality. Continued conversations with friends won’t give you the true picture. Consequently, you need real users and active marketing. This is the only way to figure out how to truly reach your audience.
5. Measure, Assess, and Adjust
Based on your findings and user feedback, make the necessary adjustments. Or, perhaps all your assumptions were invalidated and you failed. That’s okay. This is where the MVP mindset comes into play. Because you chose to limit your scope, you still have the time and resources to try again.
To put it simply, when working on an MVP, in order to create a meaningful and fruitful experience for yourself and your clients, make sure that you set clear expectations, have a structured plan and predictability. Outline small actionable steps and test the accuracy of assumptions every step of the way. As long as you keep your user at the forefront of every decision you take, you should be able to launch a successful MVP.
