What is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and Its Importance

Every business starts its operation with an idea of what product to produce. But, some businesses fail because their idea could be better. A solution available for businesses to prevent product failure is to start the product as an MVP. What is it, and why is it important? Let us find out here:

What is MVP?

MVP or Minimum Viable Product meant denoting products with sufficient features to attract early-adopting customers. When you make an MVP, you will validate the product idea early in the product development cycle. In domains like software development, the MVP can aid the product in receiving user feedback quickly. In turn, the team engaged in developing the final software can make adjustments.

As the Agile methodology involves validation and iteration of products based on user inputs, the MVP plays a crucial role in Agile Development.

What does Viable Mean?

You might have noticed that "Minimum Viable Product" has the word "viable. " What does it mean? The viability of a product can deliver the utmost value to users. One of the critical features of MVP development is ensuring the product's viability before its release.

What a product can do is more important than how it will do. When you take the case of a regular product, nearly 60% of its functionality is not used at all by users. It means that this much percentage is wasted on development resources. A viable product, on the other hand, meets the demands of users completely without any unwanted and unusable features. The key to the success of an MVP is balancing a 'viable' and 'minimum' to ensure that you create a product that will significantly help users.

Importance of Minimum Viable Product:

You can get many benefits when you develop your product as a Minimum Viable Product. More than the benefits, it is important to develop MVP for many reasons. Understanding the importance of Minimum Viable Products will help you understand the value of MVP:

Faster Release Time:

In the present competitive business world, you very well know the importance of the quicker release of your products. Only when your product reaches your audience's hands will they try it as compared to your competitors' products. 

Studies show that people often focus on the product that has entered the market first. Irrespective of whether your product provides a solution or meets customers' demands, the quicker you bring it to the user, the better.

Here, MVP development is essential because it takes only a few months to roll out your product. So, you will have better chances of grabbing the market early. Above all, MVP will let you bring a fully-functional, simple, and clean product to the market at a faster pace.

To Save Time and Money:

Another reason for the importance of a Minimum Viable Product is that it will let your business save time and money. How? No one wants their great business or idea to fail just because of a lack of finances. But, unfortunately, it happens. Studies show that nearly 29% of startups need more money before being established. Another study shows that nearly 74% of businesses with high-growth prospects fail because of premature scaling. With MVP, you can mitigate and even eliminate this risk. Developing an MVP early on with core features will help you save a lot of money in the long run. So, you can prevent your business from failing due to a lack of finances.

You will not deny that nothing is more of a time waster than the creation and addition of features that no one uses. With MVP, your business will iterate only based on real-world demand and not on hypotheticals. Aside from offensive and defensive positions, MVP helps with a commitment to developing features that are in demand against what is written on a conference room whiteboard.

So, do you wish to save your precious time and hard-earned money? Then, consider developing a Minimum Viable Product.

Quicken the Learning Curve:

One crucial lesson a business must learn when it releases its first product is getting feedback from real users. The lessons learned at this stage cannot be achieved through internal testing or research. So, when your business releases a Minimum Viable Product, it will help your product development team learn more about it. They can improve future versions of the product based on user feedback. So, MVP is important for quickening the learning curve.

To Efficiently Use Resources:

Another reason for the importance of MVP is that you can ensure your resources' effective use. Without MVP, your teams will work on a product without customer feedback. They are forced to spend their energy and time on something that could feasibly have no market. But, with MVP, your team members can spend their energy and time more efficiently on features or products that can effectively meet the requirement of customers. So, MVP saves time and money, and precious human resources.

To Test Market Demands:

Discussing the importance of a Minimum Viable Product is essential because you can test market demands in advance. Before you launch your product on the market, you should understand whether the product would work in the market. With MVP, it will be possible to test the demand for the product in the market right at the initial phase to ensure its idea will succeed once the entire product is out. Otherwise, you will have to spend your money only based on assumptions. But, with MVP, you can test market demands and accordingly release the product.

With MVP, you can test the product before its complete release. With the idea you get from the release, you can upgrade it. Otherwise, you can entirely pivot it based on the findings by measuring the performance of MVP.

A Minimum Viable Product will help businesses get into the real market quicker so that you can field-test your ideas and get good responses.

Attracts Investors Early:

With MVP, you will get feedback then and there as and when you add a new feature. Otherwise, you will have to wait until the whole product is created and delivered to customers. As you know, customer satisfaction even before the entire product's release will be easy for your business to attract investors by showing the positive feedback it has received from end users even before it is released. So, MVP is essential for attracting investors early to your products.

To Make a Product that Performs Exactly What it Showcases:

When you begin your journey with a Minimum Viable Product, it will keep your teams focused on the core values and functions. It will provide your business with clear indications about the product about what is working and what is not. You can decide what can be added and what can be upgraded. Your business will gain trust as your product will perform exactly what it showcases to end-users. This trust is essential for any business to grow, thereby making MVP a crucial tool for the growth of any business.

When you build an MVP, your initial product will be prevented from unnecessary features. Your customers will be satisfied with a simple yet effective product that meets their requirements. Again, gaining customer satisfaction is the key to growing your business to the next level.

Cost-Effective Product Development:

You know what a Minimum Viable Product is. But do you know it will help your business with cost-effective product development? How is this possible? Cost-effective product development is regarded as one of the critical benefits of MVP. When you develop the initial versions of your product, you will do it with the last features. So, it will be easy and safe concerning the cost to your business. Above all, investing less in the initial phases will aid you in keeping space for some additional upgrades if at all customers need them.

Conclusion:

Do you know that many top organizations like DropBox, Zappos, Uber, Airbnb, Spotify, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook were developers of MVP in the initial phases? You know the demand for these companies products in the market now. Above all, our business can gain more users with MVP by gathering more information about their needs. So, you can invest smartly to grow your business, and your employees can work smartly only on features that end-users need.