5 Myths You Need To Eliminate Before Developing An MVP
A minimum viable product is the most simple yet functional version of a product developed to solve a specific customer problem.
Why start with MVP?
Building an MVP will give you critical insights about your product. It will teach you what works and what doesn’t work in the eyes of the consumers.
Also, the primary objective of an MVP is not to push it toward your customers, but instead, to leverage it as a marketing tool to get traction from the users and early adopters. Finally, focus on building something that’s reliable and lacks fancy features because reliability is a crucial factor that helps in establishing trust among early adopters and gaining traction.
“A minimum viable product is the version of a new product that allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.” — Eric Ries, The Lean Startup
Now, just like anything else, creating an MVP also has its fair share of myths attached to it. In this article, we hope to bust these 5 myths about creating.
Developing an MVP can help us save money
This is a common misconception that often leads to the failure of many startups. The idea behind developing an MVP is not to save money, but instead, to spend it wisely. An MVP helps you focus on building something that has the right set of features and doesn’t require any extra effort. A lot of companies make the mistake of building a feature-rich product without paying attention to its usability or viability in the market. This results in high maintenance costs and frequent bugs that can potentially hurt your reputation among customers.
MVPs are for new companies
A lot of companies make the mistake of building an MVP only when they are launching a new product or service. While it’s true that a startup needs to build an MVP as soon as possible, it doesn’t mean that established companies can’t benefit from this approach. In fact, MVPs are helpful in all stages of your business, including growth and maintenance.
It’s too big of a risk to develop an MVP
MVP itself is not a risk, it is a way to reduce risk. If you think building an MVP is risky, perhaps the specification of your MVP is not right. You might have included too much in the MVP. In such a case, it is advisable to take a step back and brainstorm on the features again and reduce the scope of MVP.
The earlier you launch your product, the better
It’s true that you should launch your product as soon as it’s ready, but this doesn’t mean that you should launch it before it is ready. A lot of times, people think that the earlier they launch their product, the more feedback they will get from users. This is not always true. If you build something and release it without proper testing or validation, then there is a high chance that your customers won’t be satisfied with what they see on first use. It will be difficult for them to give any kind of feedback because there was no value-add in the first place!
The MVP should replace manual work as quickly as possible
A lot of people think that the MVP should replace manual work as soon as possible. They think that if they can automate a task or process, then it is not an MVP anymore. This is not true! If there’s one thing you have to remember about creating an MVP, it is that it should help solve a problem for your customers. If your product solves a problem for your customer but requires them to do something manually before using it (like filling out forms), then this does not qualify as an MVP.
Takeaway
If you can tackle these 5 myths before you even start developing an MVP, you’ll have a much easier time of it. Some of them may seem like fairly ordinary advice, but experience tells us that startups repeat the same mistakes over and over again because they only focused on one thing — building an MVP. These are some easy-to-follow rules that you can incorporate in your company from day one, and which will help you achieve immediate success.
