MVP or Minimal Viable Product, is a product that has the minimal feature set that its validity can be tested in an intended market.
Minimal - the product contains core features needed. Everything that is not needed, is stripped away.
Viable - The product has the chance to gain traction and create value for people.
Product - A digital good for use by people.
Despite the overall product offering which is often initially visualised, the core of the product is often times simple.
Take Instagram as an example. Originally, it was a way for people to add nice filters to their images. Simple. Now its far beyond that, with followers, the ability to comment and like others photos.
Keeping it simple means reducing the time to market and also the cost of getting to that market. On the flipside, developing all those cool to have features can take months at huge cost - a luxury only the risk-loving few have.
Getting your MVP to market has other advantages - namely user feedback. The ability to collect meaningful user feedback early, greatly influences the success and shape of your product. You can actually build the product users want.
How to define an MVP and product roadmap?
Essentially an MVP is a barebones feature set which provides value to a user. So defining an MVP is a process of identifying those core and nice-to-have features. The process needs to be as objective as possible.
Write the features of your product in detail into a working document. This is a valuable document as it can be used to brief designers, developers and other interested parties. Essentially, you are putting your product vision into a form which can be used to effectively communicated with others in order to have it realised.
Next, is to list feature set in order of priority. To order this way ask a) What features are the most important and b) which ones add the most value in the shortest amount of time?
The remaining features are your product roadmap which again can be ordered and prioritised at a later stage.
Building your vision
Regardless of the choice of technology to build your MVP, be careful not lose sight of the defined minimal viable product. Structure your build process in such a way that there are regular, informal ways of ensuring you're keeping on track and to the plan. There are plenty of techniques of ensuring this, but most importantly - do pick a technique. Its a sign of strength and professionalism.
Launch!
Now you've built your minimal viable product, now the real work begins. Now you need to figure out how to get user traction, feedback, bug reporting/squashing and most importantly, identifying your products strengths.
Be sure to gather as much statistical-data as possible as this will be come invaluable when making future data-driven decisions about your product. There are plenty of platforms on the net that will help you to do this.
Minimal - the product contains core features needed. Everything that is not needed, is stripped away.
Viable - The product has the chance to gain traction and create value for people.
Product - A digital good for use by people.
Despite the overall product offering which is often initially visualised, the core of the product is often times simple.
Take Instagram as an example. Originally, it was a way for people to add nice filters to their images. Simple. Now its far beyond that, with followers, the ability to comment and like others photos.
Keeping it simple means reducing the time to market and also the cost of getting to that market. On the flipside, developing all those cool to have features can take months at huge cost - a luxury only the risk-loving few have.
Getting your MVP to market has other advantages - namely user feedback. The ability to collect meaningful user feedback early, greatly influences the success and shape of your product. You can actually build the product users want.
How to define an MVP and product roadmap?
Essentially an MVP is a barebones feature set which provides value to a user. So defining an MVP is a process of identifying those core and nice-to-have features. The process needs to be as objective as possible.
Write the features of your product in detail into a working document. This is a valuable document as it can be used to brief designers, developers and other interested parties. Essentially, you are putting your product vision into a form which can be used to effectively communicated with others in order to have it realised.
Next, is to list feature set in order of priority. To order this way ask a) What features are the most important and b) which ones add the most value in the shortest amount of time?
The remaining features are your product roadmap which again can be ordered and prioritised at a later stage.
Building your vision
Regardless of the choice of technology to build your MVP, be careful not lose sight of the defined minimal viable product. Structure your build process in such a way that there are regular, informal ways of ensuring you're keeping on track and to the plan. There are plenty of techniques of ensuring this, but most importantly - do pick a technique. Its a sign of strength and professionalism.
Launch!
Now you've built your minimal viable product, now the real work begins. Now you need to figure out how to get user traction, feedback, bug reporting/squashing and most importantly, identifying your products strengths.
Be sure to gather as much statistical-data as possible as this will be come invaluable when making future data-driven decisions about your product. There are plenty of platforms on the net that will help you to do this.