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Minimum Viable Product in Agile : As the name indicates, an MVP is about minimal development, least investment to test a product’s capability and customer interest. The lean product development movement is heavily inspired by the agile principles that help us continually develop products and test with feedback. The idea is to ensure that we develop, take feedback and improve.

In this article, we talk about minimum viable product in agile, why it is important and how we can use this in our product development. Whether you’re an entrepreneur or working in a large company, the principles help us to reduce wastage and developing the wrong product overall.

Minimum Viable product in agile

As the name indicates, the MVP development is about creating minimal things to test customer behaviour. Sometimes, we use it to test a hypothesis about problems our customers face. In some other cases, we use this to collect feedback before investing in developing a prototype or complete product. The basic principles of an MVP are:

MVP characteristics

1. Minimal Features: It should be about minimal features and development only. An MVP is cheap, quick and efficient representation of a final product that we can talk to the customers with.
2. Functional: An MVP should work – it sis not a diagram on a piece of paper but something a customer can use in their journey. This focuses on the biggest pain points of a customer and tries to solve one part of it.
3. Testable: There’s no point in an MVP unless we test something. We invest in developing a minimum viable product in agile to test user behaviour. Using this feedback, we can either validate a customer need or take feedback onw hwat we can improve.
4. User-Centric: The focus should be on delivering value to the end-users. An MVP should directly address a specific pain point or fulfill a user need. User feedback and usability should guide its development.
5. Iterative and Evolvable: An MVP is not a final product but a starting point for further iterations. It should be designed to evolve based on user feedback and data insights. The goal is to build upon the MVP’s foundation, continuously improving and expanding the product over time.

MVP technique focuses on creating simple versions of a product with just enough features to meet the core needs. The primary goal of an MVP is to gather valuable feedback, validate assumptions, and test the product-market fit. We do this with minimal resources and investment with a goal to learn and iterate.

Benefits of MVP in agile

The benefits of using a Minimum Viable Product in agile product development are:

1. Faster Time to Market: It allows us to reach customers quicker rather than waiting until the entire product is complete.
2. Cost Efficiency: We build only what’s essential. This prevents any waste in product development and making sure that we create only what’s needed.
3. User Validation: It is hard to predict customer behaviour, the MVP helps us understand what they might need and how they react to a product. Sometimes, we can also validate customer interest through the MVP.
4. Iterative Development: This is the crux of minimum viable product in agile – everything is about continuous development. The full product is never ready, but we keep improving and follow an agile process to capture feedback and develop iteratively.
5. Reduce risk: The main outcome is to prevent developing the wrong thing. Investors love the MVP approach because it gets real feedback before we invest lots in developing the wrong thing.

Overall, adopting an MVP approach empowers businesses to be customer-centric, iterate quickly, and build products that address genuine market needs, increasing the chances of long-term success.

MVP development process

You can develop an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) development process through these steps:

• Ideation: Start with brainstorming, get all ideas, customer pain points and identify how you could solve the problem.
• Market Research: Identify the scope, size of the market and TAM – total accessible market for your product or proposed solution
• Define MVP scope: Define the hypothesis to solve specific problems that can solve a customer pain
• Develop designs: These designs must be with minimal investment as a way to test our hypothesis
• Testing and Validation: Test this hypothesis and designs from customers, make sure you have specific questions, templates and validate whether users will be interested in a solution like yours
• Iterative Development: Once you confirm the hypothesis, break down the product development into releasable parts.
• Scaling and Expansion: As the product gains traction and positive feedback, we develop subsequent versions to scale and expand its features and capabilities. The focus shifts from the minimum viable product to a more comprehensive and robust offering based on user needs and market demands.

The MVP development process is iterative and continuous, allowing businesses to build, test, and refine their product in an agile manner. It enables efficient resource allocation, reduces time to market, and increases the chances of building a successful and customer-centric product.

Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Examples

The first example most people talk about when it comes to Minimum Viable Product – MVP is the Dropbox idea. Dropbox devised a video that explained how they went about explaining what the technical solution was. There are multiple articles about how they did it –  a sample one is here. The idea was simple – technology is complicated. The best way to explain to an investor was to show that there was interest in this idea in the broad market.

The question is – how do you prove market interest in a new concept which was never heard of before? The idea was – create a video that explains what Dropbox does. It also went a step ahead – asked people to register if they are interested in the product. End result – Thousands of people registered to show interest in the product or service.

If you are an investor and are looking at a business idea to invest in – your key priorities are

• How unique is the service?
• What difference does it offer compared to customers?
• How difficult / easy is it to replicate by someone else?
• How interested are people in this as a business solution?

Perhaps the most important one is the last in this case. To show proof of interest of people. And dropbox did just that by showing a list of people who would be potential customers when they release.

References:

https://www.linkedin.com/advice/0/how-can-you-test-your-product-market-fit-minimum-viable

https://blog.hubspot.com/the-hustle/minimum-viable-product

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/real-world-examples-successful-mvp-products-it-s-a-virus/