5 Tips for a Minimum Viable Product

The Minimum Viable Product, or MVP, is a method pioneered by Eric Ries under his Learn Start Up movement.

The idea behind a Minimum Viable Product is to create the first version of a new software in as short a time as possible and then use this to gather feedback, improve the product and find out whether there is any demand for the new software at all. This approach allows companies to innovate and respond to change in an agile way while minimizing financial risks.

We have a lot of experience with this approach and have therefore compiled our tips and recommendations for a Minimal Viable Product below.

Minimum Viable Product Definition: What does MVP mean?

Roughly translated, a Minimum Viable Product (also Minimal Viable Product) is a viable product with the least number of attributes. It is a less elaborate version of a new product, service or business idea to gather customer or user feedback.

The goal of a Minimum Viable Product

The goal of a Minimum Viable Product is to develop a new viable product with little effort in order to gather customer feedback. This can be enormously important for the development of a product, as it avoids creating products based on assumptions.

Minimum Viable Product - The Process

We would now like to take a closer look at the process for developing a Minimum Viable Product:

• First, you should analyze your target group, prioritize the needs and work out the key benefits.

• Then you can start developing a first version of your product

• Once the product is developed, you can communicate this and the benefits to consumers

• Have users test the product and evaluate feedback

• Use the feedback to further develop or discard your Minimum Viable Product, depending on how the feedback turned out

These are the benefits of a Minimum Viable Product

The development of a Minimum Viable Product comes with some advantages, which we would like to show you here:

• Lower development costs

• Developed with a minimum of effort

• Lower risk compared to the development of a final product

• It can be released faster because the effort is lower

• Quick and efficient adaptation of the product thanks to customer feedback

• Opportunity for targeted marketing message

Areas of application of an MVP

A Minimum Viable Product can, in addition to product development, also refer to business ideas or services or test economic assumptions and business ideas. Depending on the industry, a Minimum Viable Product can also be a prototype, a model, a scheme or a beta version, for example. The areas of application are very diverse and range from software, system and product development, research and development to project management. A Minimum Viable Product can therefore be used wherever a usable product is to be developed with minimal effort.

These are our tips

1. Minimum Viable Design

There must be a good design, but a custom layout from the designer costs a lot of time and money and then the developers have to reprogram it all. This is not exactly minimal and therefore our tip is to buy a ready-made design on a marketplace like WrapBootstrap and adapt it if necessary. Such a design often costs only around 15€ and you have directly the choice between a hundred different layouts.

We also did the design of our own website this way!

2. Minimum Viable Logo

There are also marketplaces on the Internet for individual logos and graphics. Our tip here is 99 Designs. Here you can easily start a design contest via their website: In a short briefing, you describe your company and what you want from your logo design. Up to 100 designers get to work and design your logo. You provide feedback and suggestions for improvement. At the end you choose from all logos the one you like best.

3. Minimum Viable Programming

For large companies, banks and insurance companies, software development is often about minimizing risks and avoiding bugs, and rightly so. After all, who wants to lose millions of dollars because of a bug? In this case, being fast is of secondary importance. For this purpose Java is certainly the right choice. A Minimal Viable Product, however, is about trying out an idea very quickly and with little use of resources. Java is definitely the wrong choice for this, as development would take too long and be inefficient. Our tip for programming is therefore Ruby on Rails. Ruby on Rails is not only used by the majority of startups in Silicon Valley, but we can also say from experience that it is the best choice for the purpose.

Did you know that Twitter also started as a Minimum Viable Product programmed with Ruby on Rails? Then, when Twitter got big, they re-implemented it in Java. That's the silver bullet.

4. Minimum Viable Hosting

The finished software must be run on some server. Our tip here is Platform as a Service, i.e. server, database, e-mail, etc. all in the cloud and from a single source. Our absolute favorite is Heroku from Salesforce. We also host many of our projects there and can say from experience that both server uptime and usability for developers are unsurpassed. Of course it costs a lot and it could be cheaper, but you don't have to worry about that. Maintenance, backups and updates are all taken care of for you. New software versions of your product are installed with just a git push. HTTPS encryption, staging server, background jobs or arbitrary horizontal scaling is all included. Rollback in case of errors is also included.

5. Minimum Viable Domain

Domains can be bought everywhere and the price differences are usually small. The most important difference is in the Domain Name Service settings (DNS). This is where you have to go if you want to make complicated settings for a domain. For example, creating DKIM and SPF entries to verify a domain for sending newsletter emails through Mailchimp. Or if you want to create a TXT entry to prove the ownership of a domain for Google Webmaster Tools. Or all of a sudden you want to set a CNAME or A record. Most of the time you don't need all this for years, but if you need it and then you can't set it at the registrar where the domain is located, then you have a problem. That's why we always recommend to buy domains through Namecheap, because there you can change all Domain Name Service settings without any problems.

Conclusion

A Minimum Viable Product is a good way to first get an overview of customer benefits and the need for certain features. Since the MVP is tested with real customers, you also get honest feedback, which you should take into account during product development.

So if you are unsure whether an extension of your product makes sense, it is a good idea to test this with a Minimum Viable Product.