What is Minimum Viable Product and How to Make it

Every company definitely wants to develop quality and best products for its consumers. However, if the company plans the product for too long, the company risks losing its business market share opportunities.

That's why companies need to consider making a simplified version of the final product which is often called the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Many business people believe that MVP can help their business avoid the risk of loss and business failure in marketing their products. So, what is Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and how do you make it?

What is Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?

Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a simplified version of a product that has high usability features and represents the product's main value proposition. Simply put, MVP is a product that is usable, reliable, and considerate of customer needs even though the product is still in a simple version.

The MVP concept was first introduced by SyncDev's Co-Founder and CEO, Frank Robinson, in 2001. At that time, Robinson defined MVP as the result of product development and customer development that are carried out in parallel or what is often called "synchronous development".

One of the most important goals of MVP is to ensure customer satisfaction by enabling companies to make product decisions based on customer feedback as early as possible in the development process. That is, with the MVP the company will get positive and negative feedback from users. This feedback can be used as a reference to improve the product and produce the final product.

In addition, other goals of developing an MVP are:

• Minimizes the time and effort it takes for developers to test how well the market reacts to their product idea before building a full version of the product.
• Get a valid product value because the company can test the product to users as the main target market or prospects.
• Save on business operational expenses and minimize the risk of failure during product development.
• Collect the best data about user behavior to shape future product strategy and go-to-market strategy.
• Develop a dedicated pre-product launch customer base.

How to Make a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

The MVP stages are actually similar to the final product development process (product roadmap). It's just that MVP is developed in a shorter period of time and requires less production costs. The following are the steps for creating and developing an MVP.

1. Start by doing market research

Prior to undertaking the MVP development process, the product manager must ensure that the prospective product will meet the needs of the target users. To be able to do this successfully, consider conducting market research by conducting a survey. The more information or product initiation data you have, the higher the chances of success in supporting the product solutions offered.

Don't forget to pay attention to competitive advantage or competitive product uniqueness (product differentiation). If necessary, do in-depth competitor product research. With the existing qualitative data, the company can validate the existing gaps in the market (gap analysis).

2. Create value added products

The next step is to compile and explain the added value or benefits that the product will offer to users, so that users must immediately try the product. The description of these values can later assist the product manager in determining the product's value proposition.

The tips, start by describing the types of consumers as product users and build an MVP based on their needs.

3. Map the user journey

The design process is a very crucial stage of MVP development. It is called that, because the developer must design the product in a way that is comfortable for each user. In other words, the user needs to see the product from the user's point of view, from the beginning to the end of the process of using the product.

For this reason, when creating or building an MVP, developers need to map the user journey. Mapping this user flow is very important because it can help developers to ensure that nothing is missed in the development process while keeping future products and user satisfaction in mind.

4. Prioritize MVP features

At this stage, prioritize all the features that will be supported by the MVP. To prioritize MVP features, try to consider what things users want from the product. Also, determine if the product can offer them something of value.

Next, categorize all MVP features based on high priority, medium priority, and low priority. Another important step is setting up these features in the product backlog.

5. Launch MVP

Once the product build process is complete, this is when the developer can roll out the MVP to the main target audience. Also do brainstorming with users so that the business team can identify solutions that can solve user problems.

After that, evaluate each list of solutions based on business goals and determine the core features to be developed. Don't forget, define the features that make an MVP feasible for customers to use and the company should be able to sell the product after it's launched.

That's how to create and develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). In conclusion, MVP is a product with a basic set of features that are considered sufficient to attract user attention. By creating an MVP, companies can find feedback from the target market to improve their products.

Keep in mind that an MVP is not a low quality end product. Creating an MVP means finding products that meet customer needs or market orientation. Determining MVP is intended to minimize losses from a product design.