Introduction to Agile MVP
MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product. Agile Minimum Viable Product is a product equipped with features to satisfy the customers and collect and accumulate the customers’ feedback for future product development enhancement.
Agile MVP is a collection of three terms, each one having a significant meaning:
- Minimum: Symbolizing that it uses a minimum and simple set of features delivering.
- Viable: Delivering customer value and improving customer satisfaction, collecting customer feedback.
- Product: End product.
Agile Minimum Viable Product is the smallest unit of Agile Project Management that delivers customer value. Analyzing the acumens collected from the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) proves less expensive than developing a product with full-fledged features. Developing a product with full-fledged features directly without analysis increases the risk and cost due to incorrect assumptions. Agile MVP is an iterative process based on data accumulated from continuous feedback. Minimum Viable Product is based on key features like a minimum set of features, customer feedback, and minimum effort.
What is the Purpose of using MVP in Implementing Agile Practices?
Below are the various reasons for using the Agile Minimum Viable Product (Agile MVP):
- Agile MVP enables the testing of a product with the use of minimum resources. Accelerate learning.
- It helps to improve customer satisfaction and collects information for product enhancement through feedback.
- Eradicates unnecessary wastage for working hours.
- Helpful to create a foundation for other products based on the data collected through continuous feedback.
- It helps to establish brand building.
- Get the product to early customers as soon as possible.
- Agile Minimum Viable Product is extremely helpful in bridging the communication gaps between the customer and product developer and different cross-functional teams working on the product.
- The MVPs facilitate product design and cost-effective product development activities.
- Agile Minimum Viable Product provides a systematic and organized approach to exploring the untouched areas of achieving customer value and the organization’s success.
- The Agile MVP provides validated learning based on the iterative process of continuous feedback.
- Agile MVP helps to avoid capital loss and avoid failure in any venture.
- To create good customer relations.
Maximum products or services we use today are based on Agile Minimum Viable Products like Facebook, Airbnb, Groupon, Dropbox, buffer, etc. These products were developed and loaded with full-fledged features on an incremental basis rather than making them full-fledged at the initial stage. The developer came up with new versions of the products based on the feedback collected from the customers and made them productive and efficient enough to be loved by the customers. Creating and using a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) helps streamline product development to avoid uninformed decisions. Minimum Viable Product is focused on the customer’s feedback before launching a fully-fledged product.
How to Create a Minimum Viable Product?
Building an agile MVP is a systematic and iterative approach based on customer feedback. The process of building a Minimum Viable Product is divided into different steps listed below:
1. Recognizing Business Needs
The first step in developing any product is identifying and analyzing business and market needs. The business need can be the customer’s or the organization’s needs based on the market’s demand. A successful entrepreneur must do a market study and homework before starting the project. It is essential to study the competitors and the mood of the customers and the market to make the product stand out among the rest of the others. It is necessary to forecast and enlist long-term business goals.
2. Business Roadmap
Drafting a roadmap depends on factors like the type of customer and what the customer expects from the product. It is essential to determine the user flow and actions to achieve the end goal of the product or service, bearing customer satisfaction as a top priority. The process should be designed or drafted in such a way that it gives the visuals on how to design or streamline product development or service implementation. Creating a roadmap helps to understand the customer’s perspective of the product.
3. Creating a Pain and Gain map to Identify Pain Points
The next important step after drafting the roadmap is to analyze the strength and pain areas of the actions. The pain and gain map enables us to identify the pain areas and to rectify them. Once the pain areas are rectified, the pain and gain map helps to analyze the gains once the pain areas are addressed. The pain and gain map helps to analyze and remove any potential pain points and to improve customer satisfaction.
4. Adding the Required Features as Per the Collected Data in each Iteration
This step involves incorporating the features requested by the users into the products and prioritizing them based on the data collected. Adding the features necessary for product and service success is essential rather than overloading it with unnecessary features.
Benefits of using Agile Minimal Viable Product (Agile MVP)
To execute Agile MVP, you should first know its benefits; let’s look at some of the benefits explained below.
1. Early Testing of Business Concepts
Agile Minimum Viable Product (MVP) offers a core set of features at the early stage of product/service development, allowing the business to test the various business concepts and strategies at an early stage through multiple hypotheses and to understand the customer and the market’s mood. The data accumulated through the hypothesis helps to market the product quickly and to reach out to the maximum number of customers.
2. Continuous Learning and Development
The MVP is an iterative process that promotes continuous learning based on customer feedback and gains insight into what works for the customer. This information helps the product development teams use this data to make product evolution and improvement decisions. The iterations help to add more user-required features.
3. Cost Reduction and Smaller Investments
The market is studied in advance, and the hypothesis is made to test the business concept; this allows the product development team to reduce expenses and provide maximum services and the highest customer value at minimum cost. By making smaller investments, the organization acquires multiple customers, and as the number of customers/users increases, the investment can be gradually scaled up.
4. Successful Fully Fledge Products/Services Development and Good Hold on the Market
By aligning with customer needs and adapting to market trends, the organization establishes a strong market presence and attains higher levels of customer satisfaction. To make the product fully-fledged, successful, and stand out among other products in the market, the development team incorporates several user-required features based on the data accumulated during the iterations.
Building an agile MVP is a primary requirement for the substantial success of any business or software development as it gives insights into the customer requirement rather than overloading them with unnecessary features making the product usage like solving a puzzle or maze.
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