Sure, you’ve heard of the minimum viable product (MVP) before, but do you really know how to make one and where to find custom MVP app development services? Discover all our tips to develop your MVP with confidence!
Why businesses use MVPs
Under current market conditions, project managers must quickly present their product, value proposition, and technological interest to potential investors and users, as their needs develop very quickly.
Gone are the days when teams worked on a project for months to release one successful version. From now on, continuous development takes priority. And that’s in order to get as close to users’ needs as possible.
Startups should not think about their new solution in its entirety when looking for fundraising. That would take them too long. Product owners say that they should first focus on the core features to be developed for their purposes. Product owners are experts in agile methodology. They are the link between the business part and the technical part of the project.
Once developed, these features are brought to market, tested, expanded, and improved to lead to the final product.
This method is now popular in application development. It consists of two steps:
- Validating your concept with PoC, “Proof of Concept,” and prototyping,
- MVP implementation, “Minimum Viable Product”.
Let’s look together at what these two stages mean for startups as well as for large groups elsewhere.
PoC and a prototype to test your idea
In this stage, your idea is analyzed by Celadon experts. The first objective is to test the idea, confront it with the market, competitors, and consumers to see if it meets a need or opportunity. Is it workable from a marketing, technical and economic point of view? Is it an innovative project?
Once a project is deemed workable, it is a question of development: the realization of precise specifications, the creation of frameworks (the functional model of the product), and the layout (the aesthetic representation of the product).
Then comes the development of the prototype. The prototype answers the question, “What does our solution look like?” When developing applications, we distinguish two types of prototyping:
Horizontal prototype
It represents only the interface of the solution. It is a static model. Only the general layout and interface elements are represented: buttons, menus, input fields, etc.
Vertical Prototype
It implements simplified functionality so that the user can deploy a typical use case.
MVP for quick testing
An MVP is a functional product. It is the first version of your product that contains the basic features that directly meet your purpose. At this stage, some features that are considered non-essential are set aside. They will be developed later when an MVP is tested and approved by stakeholders.
Once the prototype is done, this “simplified” product is developed to be quickly released to the market. The goal is to present your project to the target audience. Then comes the stage of collecting user feedback to validate the MVP and expand it iteratively.
After the MVP is tested with a minimal set of features, new features can be added using the PoC natural progression, Prototype, and then the MVP. Most custom MVP app development services providers work this way in an agile method.
- PoC to verify that these features will fit the needs.
- MVP to validate our ideas with our goal and our future customers.
The MVP phase can have an uncertain duration because of its iterative nature. Generally speaking, a startup should count for about a year to get a stable and final version of its product. And thus concretize the idea dedicated to innovation.
MVP: Benefits for a startup
You reduce the risk of failure
During cascade projects, startup teams are very often disappointed because the final product is not what was expected. The frustration is even greater because they need to reinvest the money to modify the product again. Creating an MVP allows them to visualize the result and refine it. This reduces the risk of failure because you test your proposal with your customers and make sure you are on the right technological path.
You spend less at the beginning of the project
Creating MVP costs you far less than creating a one-shot product. Why? Because you make your features as you go, rather than creating a product with multiple features that your users won’t use every time. You develop your innovative technology step by step. It also has the virtue of forcing the manager to synthesize their proposal to determine its real added value.
You save time
It’s much faster to create an MVP than to develop software with many features at once. You test and tweak your proposal with your users. So you are more attentive to new business models.
You have an overview of your costs
The Celadon team advises its customers to deploy their applications on cloud servers because a cloud provider makes it easier to create applications in microservices. It also allows you to overview your costs: you only pay for the resources you consume. This can be strategic at the beginning of a project. There is no more complicated infrastructure to pay for, even if it is not being used.
How do you go from an MVP to a full-scale product?
That’s it, thanks to the MVP method, you know your product can be a big success! Now that you’re sure, what are the next steps? First of all, don’t rush things. There really is absolutely nothing minimal about launching a minimally viable product. It’s not just a product that you work on for two or three months before launching. On the contrary, it’s a process that takes a lot of effort even after the MVP is launched. So, here are a few tips for successfully transitioning from MVP to final product.
Gathering feedback
Once your MVP is released to the market, you know specifically which path you need to take, thanks to the feedback consumers give you. By collecting usage data and analyzing metrics, you can customize the functionality of your product with full knowledge of the facts.
Don’t neglect product scalability
Your MVP has won the hearts of your users. Now you need to set yourself up for success when you release your final product. And to do that, you can’t underestimate the scalability of your product.
Continue analysis and testing
The final product is never really finished. Your project is an iterative process that requires constant real-time analysis and learning
