What Is An MVP?

A minimal viable product, or MVP as they call it, is a product that is fully equipped to attract early adopter customers and validate product ideas early in the product development cycle. 

In industries like the one you’re into — software and mobile apps, MVPs can help product teams get user feedback as soon as possible to iterate and improve their products. 

MVPs play a central role in agile development because the agile method is based on user input-based product validation and iteration.

Now, if you’re wondering what the purpose of an MVP is, it is a new product version that allows teams to maximize the number of validated insights about their customers with minimal effort. 

There is several reasons why you should release an MVP before the actual product itself, such as:

  • To release the product in the market as soon as possible
  • To test your ideas with real users before spending a lot of money on the full development of your product
  • And to learn what resonates with your target audience well before you launch the full-fledged tool.

Another benefit of building an MVP is that they are quick and cheap to set up and are a great tool for testing your ideas before investing time and money to bring the complete product to market. 

Once you’ve started your MVP and gained important insights you’ve never seen before, you can step through your MVP and quickly start a new version. 

By repeating this process consistently, you have a product concept that fits your market, and you are ready to build a complete product.

How To Write Scope For Your MVP?

When starting at the scale of your MVP project, don’t focus on brainstorming features alone. Of course, if you consider a feature to be your ultimate goal — you’ll see a list of all the features your product may have. 

But does your MVP need to have all the possible features at the very beginning stage? 

You can determine the potential business impact of investing time and money in a development project rather than focusing on features. Now that you have determined the business impact your project will have — you can choose what you need to reach that goal.

Also, you don’t have to worry too much about creating an ideal MVP scope from scratch. Starting with the first draft, it can get pretty messy. Then repeat it to improve. Scopes shouldn’t be considered full of holes – you don’t have to rush to perfection. Follow the process and save a lot of developer time later until you feel confident. 

And finally, review each use case and ask yourself the following questions for each action or step.

  • Do I need this step to move on to the next step? 
  • Is this step even necessary?
  • Can I reach the goal of this step more easily, more intuitively, or in a more automated manner? 
  • What is the cumulative user experience impact if this step is removed? 
  • Can this step be divided into smaller and more detailed steps? 
  • What do users expect at this step? 

If you find a step that can be split, simplified, or deleted, revisit each use case to see how the history changes and if that change gives you more flexibility.