How to Plan a Minimum Viable Product: Your Ultimate Guide

Do you have an idea for mobile app development and are not sure how exactly it will work? Opting for a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) will help you. You can also validate your idea by creating an MVP. An MVP will help you judge the feasibility of your idea and its usability to your target audience. A better understanding of customer’s needs can be achieved with the help of MVP development.

Source: Dribbble

Before diving deep into the Plan let’s understand what an MVP is and what are its benefits. You can also read about Different Types of Mobile Apps that you can plan for developing.

What Is An MVP?

MVP or minimum viable product in terms of mobile app development means building a basic version of your iOS and Android app. The core functionalities of your mobile app are integrated so that the response of your target audience can be noted down.

As per the response, you can then proceed further with the fully functional mobile app. You can augment or deduct the functionalities as per the feedback received from the customer. This will work as a minimum viable product template.

Source: Dribbble

Attracting early adopters, finding faster time to market, and achieving a mobile app with the right set of functionalities are some of the intentions of creating MVP. MVP can be created in about 3 months and that too without much of an investment. Therefore, MVP development can serve you with the best experimenting and learning process about your mobile app. Speeding up of app development process can also be enabled by practicing tips in our blog, Top 8 Ways to Speed Up the Development Process of Your Mobile App.

What Are the Benefits of an MVP for Your Business?

If you are still asking ‘Why Build An MVP?’, here are some of the benefits of MVP development that you must know of:

1. Build The Core Functionalities

MVP development is all about integrating just one idea in your mobile app. There are no other functions available as of now. This technique reduces the budget and risk. You can test the basic functionality of your product and your idea’s feasibility without spending a lot of money.

2. Start Testing Early

Without having to invest the whole amount, you will be able to test the functionalities of your product. You will be able to know if people are ready to accept your idea. To know how much usually it takes to develop a complete mobile app, you can visit our blog, How Long Does It Take To Develop An App?

3. Gather Feedback

You can improve your product at the early stages as, after MVP development you will be able to gather feedback from your target customers. Your iOS and Android app will come out clean and with functionalities that users expect from you.

4. Find Investors

You can also budgetise your mobile app by finding investors by showing your MVP. After displaying your working idea to the potential investors, there is a better chance of getting the required money. Read our blog, ‘How Much Does it Cost to Make an App in 2021?’ for a better understanding of costs related to mobile app development.

The Step-By-Step Guide To Plan A Minimum Viable Product

Ensuring that MVP meets the needs of the people is very important. Finalizing your product and marketing will become easy by following the right steps. Here is a simple four-step process of the MVP development framework or you can say minimum viable product template. You can also check out 7 Stages of the New Product Development Process.

1. Understand The Needs of Your Business and Market

Analyzing the need for your product in the market is of prime importance. Your iOS and Android app could be solving problems people have with existing solutions or maybe touching a completely new niche.

Checking out your competitors and what they are doing at best will help you integrate similar functionalities. You must also check out where they are lagging somewhere as you may fix the issue for the people in your mobile application.

Define Your Long Term Goals: What do you want to accomplish in the future? It may even take many steps to complete your long-term goal. Where do you see yourself five years from now? It can be about increasing wealth or expanding into newer opportunities.

Success Criteria: Success criteria are meeting the desired requirements of the mobile app. For example, it can be selling 1000 new products within five months.

2. Learn About The Journey Of a User

We are creating MVP to make our mobile app in line with the users’ demands. Therefore, the next stage of MVP development involves knowing more about the potential users. Mapping out the journeys of a user on our mobile app will empower us with the perspective of a user. The users’ perspective in turn will assist us in mobile app development as per the requirements of the user.

How To Create A User Journey?

Identify The User:

User Identification is the first step of creating a user journey. Who are your potential users? Where do they live? Which operating system do they prefer? Learn as much as you can about the users.

Identify The Actions:

User actions or jobs are required to understand the actions of users required to achieve the end goal. You will have to focus on multiple users to identify all the priorities and actions a user has to define.

Identify The Goal:

The users would have the ultimate goal of operating the mobile app. We need to identify that.

User (Action)	Actions (Jobs)	Goal(Story Ending)
Coffee Drinker	Profile Creation Find The Coffee Order Pay	Drink Coffee

3. Create A Pain And Gain Map

After identifying the workflow of the user, it is time to define the pain and gain a map of each action. This mapping will help you in specifying the problems and eases a user may have while doing the action. This will add an immense amount of value to your iOS and Android app. You can create a chart of your pains and gains just like the example given below.

Pains	Action	Gains
Preferred paying method not available.	Pay	Successful selection of the payment method and order.

4. Decide The Features You Wish To Integrate

You will need to find out the features that need to be included in your MVP. You must also learn about the features that are on lower priority for your final mobile app release. The needs versus wants of the users can be mapped. To take an example of features you can visit our blog, How To Develop Marketplace App Like Wish – Including Cost & Top Features.

Source: Gifer.com

This will help you develop a perfect plan and understand the prioritized features. Having too many features can also harm your mobile app in the long run. Include only the features that connect users and help them solve their problems.

Opportunity Statements

Finalizing the features that you wish to include in your mobile app can be done with the help of opportunity statements.

Add Features to Your Product Roadmap

Break down all the features you wish to include in your mobile app and include them in the product roadmap.

Know Your Prioritisation

If you wish to know the urgency of the features in your mobile app, you must create a prioritization matrix. This will help you identify the most important features that you must include in the MVP.

Plan a Minimum Viable Product: Conclusion

MVP development will help you solve the core problems of your iOS and Android mobile app. Your MVP need not be perfect but you will end up with a perfect mobile app in the end. You can also check out our Mobile App Development Process: Step-by-Step Guide.