Do you want to build software but are unsure whether it will be successful or not?
Don’t you want to waste your time, money, or efforts on a software concept?
If yes, you have landed on the right blog post.
No one wants to build a software solution which has no future or no demand in the market. However, bringing an idea to the market is always a risk.
In fact, big giants like Amazon, Facebook, and Uber never invested efforts and money in one go. They also had to go through several processes of building a full-fledged software solution. Yes, these successful software solutions were once MVPs.
But what is an MVP in software development exactly?
As a leading software development company, we understand the importance of MVP software development. This is why we curated this complete guide on MVP software development to help understand this whole concept.
Read this guide to learn the following points:
Being a leading software development company, we have curated this complete guide on an MVP development.
Table of Contents
MVP in software development is building a product with minimal effort and having high capabilities of growing or gaining success.
The MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product.
Even developing an MVP has a purpose, and therefore, it is highly popular among startups and even enterprise-level companies.
If you are excited to find the purpose of an MVP, check the next section, where we have shared 4 purposes for developing an MVP version of your software.
Let’s better understand why it is essential that you build an MVP by discussing the purposes of MVP. Then, you will get a better idea of how MVP can actually help you.
We have understood the purpose of building a minimum viable product. But let’s understand why you need an MVP software development for your startup business.
If you are in a dilemma of understanding whether you need to build an MVP or not, then you need to check the following reasons. We have explained some of the significant reasons why you need MVP software development.
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If you are convinced of the purpose of an MVP and want to know how you can build an MVP version of the software, check the next section.
We have explained the step-by-step process to build software from scratch. Following these 6 steps will help you build an MVP, test your business concept, and learn from the feedback.
You need to ensure that your idea meets the demands of the target audience. Therefore, at the initial stage, confirm whether your software idea will fit the market needs or not.
To conduct market research, you need to identify your competitors and evaluate their strategies and weaknesses. You must also ensure that you offer your customers a unique value proposition.
Once you have evaluated essential data, it is time to put it all together and consult with an experienced and reliable software development company to discuss your MVP software development requirements.
In this stage, you would focus on resolving all your doubts, enhancing your software idea, and deciding on the tech stack to ensure you are heading toward developing a successful solution.
Even though you have discussed your doubts with the dedicated software development team, it is essential that you again validate your software concept. This is to ensure that you are making no mistakes while building an MVP version of the software.
To validate your software concept, you can:
Your team would create a design process to ensure that the designs are convenient for the users and are easily able to navigate your software. The user flow will make sure that nothing is missed when it comes to offering the best user experience.
At this stage, you will also be able to determine the different stages of software development to reach the main objective. Your goals should focus on the end users and how they will interact with the software.
Moving ahead, you would be required to decide on the features you want to add to the software. Then, prioritize in a way that you add only the required and essential features. To do this, you can think of the demands of users and how the decided features will help them.
Suppose you need more help in defining features. In that case, you can categorize your software features based on their priorities, such as high-priority, medium-priority, and low-priority features.
So after everything is decided, build your first MVP version and make it ready to launch in the market for a successful test attempt to see how users perceive your software and find their opinions and feedback. It is the best way to make a product that your customers love.
Therefore, you constantly need to evaluate the requirements or demands of users and see how you can prioritize the features for the next development phase of the MVP version.
Despite having a full-proof MVP development process, there are some scenarios where your MVP can go wrong and fail. There might be different reasons for this. Therefore, we have included this topic in our guide to make you aware of such scenarios. Have a look.
Owning a startup business and investing a lot of resources, money, and time, you would surely not want your project to fail. Therefore, it is essential that you know why an MVP fails.
Before you go on, you need to summarize nearly all the reasons for MVP failures so that you can actually keep those in mind at the time of minimum viable product creation.
Along with this, you should also be aware of when it is apt to develop an MVP version of the software. So, let’s find out such scenarios when you can create an MVP.
Here are a few situations for developing an MVP version for your software.
When you:
With this, we will also discuss some scenarios when it is not ideal for building an MVP. As MVP comes with its own limitations sometimes, it is better if you know such situations beforehand.
After discussing with our experienced software developers, we have curated the list of scenarios for not developing an MVP.
When you:
We will also discuss a section where we have mentioned the top examples of software which were MVPs once. So let’s dive deeper to find these examples.
We are going to discuss the top MVP examples which were earlier built as minimum viable products. However, these software solutions didn’t stay MVPs for long after receiving huge compliments from their respective users. You have probably heard of these names, but you may not have known that they were MVPs once. Find out here.
Logo | Software | Description |
---|---|---|
Dropbox | Initially, Dropbox started out as a demo video MVP, not a physical product. In this demo video, Dropbox began to explain the benefits of storing data in one place. Dropbox explained the core value proposition and shared the importance of sharing files. So after the launch of Dropbox, it acquired more than 1 million users just within 7 months. | |
Foursquare | When Foursquare was launched in 2009, it had only one feature that allowed people to check in at different locations and gain badges. Later, people really started enjoying using this feature and loved the services offered by Foursquare. This led the owners of Foursquare to create a solid user base and become a full city guide for travellers. | |
Airbnb | Initially, the problem was identified by the founders of Airbnb itself when they faced challenges in booking a hotel in San Francisco. Later, they set up mattresses in their rooms and advertised the same. It became a hit, and the founders quickly understood that this idea would be going to be successful. This is how the platform grew from there, and now, it is estimated at USD 5.99 billion and is used in more than 191 countries. | |
In January 2004, it started as Thefacebook with minimal features, which is only used to connect with friends and families. The Facebook profiles were quite basic, with less information. However, the founders of Facebook from Harvard University realized this idea was worth expanding, and then they gradually added more complex features with time. Now, it has roughly 2.93 billion users as of the second quarter of 2023. | ||
Amazon | Today Amazon is successful, but it was an MVP before. Most people know that Amazon started as a platform to sell books online. The founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, used to purchase books directly from distributors and sell them to customers whenever he received an online order. High sales gave him a push to offer more products through his platform, and then soon he acquired a warehouse, and now, he is one of the top billionaires in the world. |
We have checked some of the popular software, which was once an MVP. However, their founders and investors believed in their ideas and continued to enhance their services to make the software more successful and stand out from the crowd.
Now, let’s check some of the myths which are associated with an MVP software development and debunk them. This will help you make the right decision and build a successful MVP solution.
Apart from discussing just facts in this section, our main aim is to help you debunk some of the common misconceptions which are associated with MVP in software development.
No doubt that MVP is the right solution to test your ideas in the market and attract investors owning a startup business. However, this is not the case.
Because even when you build your first version of the product, you are better able to know your target audience without investing much time and cost.
You will be able to analyze the market to understand the market demand of the users and discover new opportunities. So yes, enterprise-level companies can also build MVPs.
Even this is one of the most popular misconceptions that you will hear about MVP. This misconception leads enthusiasts to put technology before anything to test their ideas.
However, the keystone of a lean startup is to validate the target audience and development. And this is why most successful products significantly focus on this.
Facebook is one of the best examples, whose only idea was to connect college students through a platform. This was rolled out only to test the feasibility of the idea before the full software development process.
This is definitely not the case with minimum viable products. As an MVP has the most basic features, it helps you to pick the right set of features for your software with utmost vigilance.
Using MVP, the right kind of use cases are created just to identify the most appropriate set of features. So definitely, an MVP has use cases.
In some situations, you might make quick profits with an MVP solution. However, this is not the basic idea of an MVP launch. The aim behind launching an MVP is just to validate your ideas.
In this process, you might receive negative feedback from your users. But you constantly need to focus on that feedback and continue to go back to the storyboard to enhance the quality of your software.
MVP plays a great role in designing a better product for your business that ultimately enhances the quality of your software. However, this is why it is wrong to expect quick profits from an MVP.
Want to Know How Much It Costs to Build an MVP?
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Want to know more about the role of MVP in software development? Check the below section, where we have addressed some of the frequently asked questions related to MVPs.
Here are some common mistakes you must avoid while building an MVP version of the software.
The minimum viable product (MVP) is a product that has sufficient features to attract early users for your software and test your business concept and enhance the software performance with an iterative development process.
On the other hand, the minimum marketable product (MMP) is a solution that is ready for the market. Therefore, it is also known as MMF (minimum marketable feature), which aims at offering the smallest set of functionality you integrate to drive any value.
Here are a few things that you can consider to measure the success of your software.
This guide has helped you walk through the complete MVP development process, including the steps, purposes, examples, myths, and some FAQs. As you know the purpose and have understood MVP in software development, it will be easy for you to make the right decision.
However, if you want to take an opinion or guidance from an experienced technical consultant before developing your MVP, get in touch with our software development team. Being a top software development company, we have experience building over 300 software solutions.
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