My process for building an MVP in 12 weeks
MVP is an acronym that stands for the minimum viable product. To put it simply it is a product with minimal features to go to the market and satisfy users’ needs.
Why is MVP important?
MVP predicts if your final product has premises to be successful or not by attracting early customers and validating your idea in its developing cycle.
Now let’s jump into the main theme!
Curious to know how I built an MVP in 12 weeks?
These are the steps that I took:
- Analytical analysis of the product idea
Almost three intensive weeks were dedicated only to this phase.
We had to make sure that our product idea was thought deeply in every detail.
The product – is a virtual office but what does it offer? How could it stand out?
Which group of people can benefit from it? Are we setting up ourselves to reinvent the wheel?
These were some of the questions that kept our analytical thinking active.
The number one reason start-up fail is that they offer services no one needs.
We made a lot of detailed market research to avoid this approach but also tried to see things from the customer’s perspective.
The market is ruthless and dynamic and if the input is vague the output is devastating.
Therefore, I maximized the input by collaborating with a skillful team to connect every dot.
- A chief technical officer to develop our tech resources.
- Business analyst to strengthen our business process
- Solution architect to design products and help CTO
- UX/UI designer to humanize the product and make it more accessible for users.
This is one of the most important phases of building an MVP, and my advice would be to not hurry but sharpen your ideas first.
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
– Abraham Lincoln
- Asking for feedback on our prototype product
There’s no doubt that the first phase is one of the most important ones before building an MVP.
After finalizing our product idea and ways how to make these ideas practical we decided to test the product.
We spend three weeks gathering feedback from stakeholders and adapted the changes to our product. We took into consideration in detail every suggestion of our early testers.
We were eager to improve our product and to understand the potential it had for succeeding.
Adaption of these changes determines the “fate” of the final product in the market.
- Implementation of MPV
After feedback was gathered we spent six weeks updating the backlog and user stories.
We listed all the requirements from new features to defects and different enhancements.
Then we adopted the pain and gain technique to identify users’ pain points.
What were their problems and how could we practically solve them?
We prioritized making our product usable and in its best condition for our users to be fully satisfied with it.
The implementation of MPV required a lot of time and patience but we are happy to say that we succeeded even in this phase.
- Releasing and post-launch support
The last phase was resolving the defects found and preparing the product for release. Based on our customer and team feedback we started to develop the rest of the features.
Although the feedback was diverse and extremely useful adapting most of it too fast could be risky.
That’s why we made sure to develop only the features that were related to the overall goal of our customers.
In the end, I want to emphasize that building an MVP shouldn’t be put on strict deadlines. What I finalized in 12 weeks someone else can finalize in less or more.
Even though time is an important element, the real difference is made by what the product can offer.
