How To Plan A Lean MVP That Scales? (An Essential MVP Guide)

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How To Plan A Lean MVP That Scales? (An
Essential MVP Guide)
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RAJEEV SHARMA March 10, 2022
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How do you turn your business idea into reality?
By taking your vision of the product or service.
And breaking them down into actional steps. When
it comes to MVP development, you should apply the
same strategy. Lets take a real business
example You might have heard how Amazon was
founded in the garage of Jeff Bezos rented home.
Do you know what the MVP of Amazon looked like?
They started with a simple website with just a
catalog of books. They implemented several
iterations of the initial MVP. Now Amazon is one
of the top largest retailers in the world. There
are many such inspiring Minimum Viable Product
examples from all over the world. But the most
important question remains, what is the simple
formula for success in MVP? We have compiled a
list of essential checklists for building an MVP
in this blog. And a 6-step MVP roadmap to
kickstart your software development journey.
What is MVP?
One of the terms or jargon which is very popular
in the product development world is an MVP
(Minimum viable product). The term MVP was
coined by Frank Robinson and became popular
through the book The Lean Startup by Eric Reis.
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An MVP is simply a launchable version of your
product with minimal features. It allows testing
and further development of
your product. The first product you give to your
first set of users to test and validate the value
of your product idea. It is like a foundational
building block for your final digital product or
mobile app.
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If youre stuck at Creating a Minimum Viable
Product for your enterprise Or havent built your
MVP yet or are unable to decide which features to
include, Or if your MVP is taking longer than
expected.
Keep on reading this blog to get all your
answers. As the author, Eric Reis, said, The
ability to learn faster from customers is the
essential competitive advantage that startups
must possess. (The Lean Startup). Learning from
customers and iterations is how a Minimum Viable
Product enables your product development process.
The core part of building a digital MVP and
custom software is understanding its value to
your customers. Here is a list of checklists to
consider for building an MVP successfully
1. Choose a lean minimum viable product
So, what is a lean MVP, and why should you choose
it in your digital product development? A lean
MVP is faster to build with limited features and
a set of users. In most industries launching a
lean MVP is accessible and viable, apart from
sectors like banking or insurance, which have
regulations. The digital product has to pass
through certain regulatory bodies in such cases.
Biotech is another industry where a lean MVP is
impossible for obvious reasons. But for most
industries, a Minimum Viable Product is launched
with minimal features and in less time. Most
billion-dollar enterprises now, like Airbnb,
Dropbox, Twitch, Stripe, and more, started with a
basic version of their digital product. Do you
know that Airbnb started with a simple landing
page with no features like map view or even
payments? Read how to develop apps like Airbnb
and Slack? (frameworks and features) here The
point here is that launching your MVP is possible
with simple websites and MVPs with minimal
features, which act as a base for testing in
your digital product development. A lean Minimum
Viable Product, thus, is a building block. It is
a process to develop the final product you want
to build for your enterprise.
2. Talk to your users/customers.
It is conducive to talking to some users or
customers before you plan to build a Minimum
Viable Product. It doesnt imply that you have
to spend years on customer interaction or
research. But customer feedback and some
interactions with your users will help you
develop solutions that serve your customers. If
you can be your product user, then it can also be
helpful to bring those insights while building
your MVP. In simple words, if you are solving
some problem for your customers, you should have
a general idea of the problem and the potential
solution for it.
3. Know your MVP approach
While building an MVP, you must identify possible
MVP approaches and implement them closer to your
business goals and requirements. Some different
kinds of digital MVP approaches are no product
MVP, Product-mockup, Single-feature MVP, and MLP.
Each of these approaches is explained in the
later section of this blog. (Please refer to the
step-by-step guide below)
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4. Stick to limited functionality
You need to condense down what exactly your
initial user needs. Start with a simple set of
things and prioritize them. Most startup founders
struggling to launch their MVP are stuck because
they want to address all of their users problems,
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including their potential users, for the
future. For a more effective and lean Minimum
Viable Product, you should focus on a small set
of initial users. Focus on solving their
highest-order problems, and then keep the rest
until the later development process of your
digital product. The crucial thing here is to
have a vision for your MVP and assign a time
limit for your MVP development. The advantage of
a lean MVP is that it gives a base to
iterate. Its precisely what you should aim for
while building your MVP. It is just a starting
point and not your final product to include
every feature. Contrary to what you might
believe, your MVP is not too memorable. Do you
remember when successful enterprises like
Facebook, Airbnb, Twitch, Stripe, and more
launched their apps? And what do they look like
initially? There lies the answer. Airbnb
launched with a basic website and no features
like map view and payments, which are available
now. They delivered MVPs quickly, iterated,
often learning from their users, and are worth
billions of dollars.
5. Optimize and improvise
Iteration is the key when building a Minimum
Viable Product. But distinguish between iterating
and pivoting. You dont need to fall in love
once you have created your MVP and move on too
quickly, bringing in new features. If your
product does not work for a specific set of
users, you should not go into planning to expand
your product. You need to improvise in such
cases of MVP development. So, before bringing in
new features to your digital product, improvise
on the important ones first. And iterate.
Continue improving on your solution until it
solves the users problems.
Current discussions on MVP Is MVP dead?
One of the growing queries on Quora is how
unpolished can be MVP?. On the other hand,
Hackernoon writes, The MVP is dead. Long Live
the RAT. Google autocomplete also suggests MVP
is dead if you type MVP is However, much of
these discussions refer to the misuse and
confusion around MVP. And also propose different
alternatives like RAT- Risk Assumption Test ( to
test the riskiest assumption), MVE Minimum
Viable Experiment ( to test the central premise
of a business idea), MCP Minimum Compelling
Product ( to build something compelling for
users), and more such alternatives. These
alternatives emphasize the different aspects of
MVP building. And address some of the prevalent
problems with building an MVP. Further Reading
Think Of These Top 7 Common Security Threats For
Enterprise Development
A 6-step MVP roadmap for building an MVP with
success
The challenge in building MVP is execution and
materializing your products initial idea. We
have carefully curated a step-by-step MVP process
to ensure a successful MVP as a product
development company.
1. Comprehensive research
The first and foremost step is an insight into
the problem you are addressing for your users and
the solutions that you can offer. For this step,
you can utilize a standard Product/Market Fit
Pyramid, which includes a set of
intricacies. Like your target customer,
underserved needs, feature set, value
proposition, and user experience. It would help
if you addressed vital questions like what is
the market?, Who are the people who have the
said problem?, Is there a market need that
your product is countering? etc.? These
questions are helpful in the pre-planning stage
and market research of your MVP. Apart from such
relevant questions, the three major questions
that you need to ask are
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Which exact problem is your MVP meant to solve?
Who are the users interested in your
product? What are the existing solutions to this
problem in the market?
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2. Features identification and prioritization
The next step is identifying the essential
features you want to implement in the product.
Here, your product vision is the most important
to focus on. Discuss and write down different
features and specifications that might be
valuable for users needs. After that timebox
those features for development. If all features
do not fit into your scheduled launch time, cut
them down to the essential ones. The features
you plan to include in your product need to be
prioritized by their importance. Divide the
features and specifications into must-haves,
could-haves, and wont-haves. It is crucial to
have one top-priority feature that reflects your
products core value at this MVP stage. Do you
know that most of the famous and successful apps
now were once built on very few features as an
MVP product? Airbnb didnt have the payments
feature and the most used map view
feature. Similarly, the Stripe app had no bank
deals and significantly fewer features, to begin
with. Hence, an MVP is not about perfection but
a roadmap for your perfect final digital product.
You need to implement core features and
start! Further Reading iOS Vs Android Mobile
App Development Key Differences
3. MVP approach selection
There are different approaches when it comes to
building an MVP. You need to select the one
according to your needs and resources. Your MVP
development process should follow one of the MVP
approaches mentioned below No-product No-product
MVP is an approach where you validate your
product idea and get feedback without coding, as
Eric Reis mentioned in his book The Lean
Startup. Here are the two ways of No-product
MVP Idea visualization In this approach, you
test an idea and its opportunity through the
hypothesis of your product using marketing
campaigns. There are no building blocks or
actualization of your future product. It just
shows or explains how the product will look and
its functions. This approach can be implemented
using landing pages, surveys, advertising
campaigns, videos, blogs, etc. The most
significant advantage of idea visualization over
other MVP approaches is its cost-efficiency. It
also requires much less time. A famous example
of idea visualization MVP is Dropbox, which
started with a simple demo video and attracted
thousands of users to its websites. They further
developed the product based on the feedback from
the users. Sell irst, build afterward. In this
approach, you start a presale of the product
before actually building it. It usually includes
crowdfunding campaigns on relevant platforms
like Kickstarter. Sell the first MVP ensures that
your idea is liked by people and raises
investment from contributors. In simple words,
you launch a campaign to sell a product yet to
exist and develop. Product-mockup A product
mockup enables you to develop a part of your
future products functionality. With the
product-mockup approach, you have several
options to choose from when creating your
MVP. Single-feature MVP As the name suggests,
this approach includes focusing on core
functionality. So that your users understand what
the product is meant for. In this approach, you
need to build the MVP to fulfill the users core
requirement at least by 80. MLP
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Minimum Lovable Product or MLP focuses on user
delight with the minimum viable product. Unlike
building a viable
product, lovable replaces it for a memorable
experience for its first-time users. The idea of
the MLP is to enhance a products basic set of
features. For an improved user experience
through visually appealing app design,
illustrations, micro-interactions, etc. It
utilizes
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intuitive information architecture for a
streamlined flow etc. Further Reading 7 Reasons
Why You Need a Mobile App for Your Business
4. Success criteria identification
How will you know whether your MVP is a success
or not? To identify that, you need to specify
some key metrics, which are as
follows Activations Active users Customer
feedback NPS(Net Promoter Score) MRR(Monthly
Recurring Revenue) CAC(Customer Acquisition
Cost) ARPU(Average Revenue Per User)
5. Prepare a story map.
Story Mapping includes four components Goals gt
Activities gt User or Job Stories gt Tasks. It is
crucial for the prioritization of features and
also for creating a breakdown of your product
backlog. Goals are at the core of any product
and require implementing certain features and
activities. You can turn goals into user or job
stories. A story map enables you to understand
your products gains and pain points. 6. MVP
launch If you have learned how to build MVP, you
are already halfway through the process.
Launching MVP should be easy because,
essentially, its the foundational block of your
future product. After following all the steps
mentioned above, you are all set to launch your
MVP. B-M-L-I (Build- Measure-Learn-Iterate) Fina
lly, exercise BLMI (build-measure-learn-iterate).
When you have built your MVP, it is the start of
building a product and thus a constant process
of validated learning. After defining your
product with an MVP, you need to test the product
and get helpful feedback from the users. Quality
Assurance engineers conduct the first testing
stage and improvise the overall quality of your
product. You need to review each detail after
launching the MVP. From your users reactions,
feedback and release, everything helps you
determine the acceptability and potential of your
product in the market. Markovate has curated a
step-by-step process to ensure successful MVP
deployment as a product development
company. Markovate is a digital product and app
development company specializing in creating
custom digital products using modern, up-to-date
technologies. Read more about us here.
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RAJEEV SHARMA Author
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Rajeev Sharma is the Co-Founder and CEO at
Markovate, a digital product development company
based out of Toronto. With more than 12 years of
experience in digital product development, he has
led major digital transformations and product
development at ATT and IBM. Rajeevs core
expertise includes mobile and web development,
product growth, and UX design. He holds a degree
in Computer Science Scrum Alliance
certifications. Apart from his projects, he is
deeply involved in Metaverse and closely follows
the latest trends. ? ? ?
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