What is MVP and How it Helps Mobile App Development?

What is a Minimum Viable Product?

The idea of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) has been around for years and was first created by Frank Robinson. However, it was made popular by two product designers, Steve Blank and Eric Ries. The most common definition of MVP is ‘’ The littlest thing that can create that brings customer value. ’It’s crucial that the team of developers outline what the customer group will be for the product. This will be a selective group that may be early adopters and therefore, more forgiving of the product’s early faults compared to people that often attach themselves to more recognised technology. The selective group will give their feedback on the MVP and will govern the strategic direction of the product development.

The MVP is therefore a process that is devoted to making new products that will be sold to customers. Furthermore, the product will undergo a process of iteration after it gets on to the market to reach a more required state or the product development will be discarded if the market decides that the product is unusable.

What are the Advantages of using an MVP Process for App Design?

There are several pros of using a Minimum Viable Product process; they concern not only the design team but also the client that the mobile app is for:

  • You can examine your understanding of whether the app is needed without having to take advantage of resources to develop the full product.
  • You can improve your teams learning concerning what the customer needs whilst using fast iteration to produce this.
  • MVP allows you to reduce the number of hours that have been wasted spent by the development team by concentrating on the minimum number of features at the launch.
  • This process can get the mobile app on the market faster, thus increasing sale revenues compared to developing the fully featured app for promotion.
  • MVP can give you a competitive edge, if other competitors are anticipating entering the market you are in.

The simplest thing to remember to gain the advantages of an MVP is that you’re looking to produce the simplest product to see if the app should be built in the first place. The overall purpose of testing the app is to decide whether the mobile app development should be moved forward to the next stage or be discarded.

There are different testing approaches when it comes to MVP:

  • Websites & Applications

An easy way to test demand for an app is to create a website for it and buy traffic to the website. Telling the people that come to your website to click for information will tell you how effective the app is going to be. You would compare how many visitors clicked on the link compared to the total number of visitors.

  • Test the App

An effective way to test how the app will perform is to get a ‘tester’ who will use the app and give their feedback.

  • New Features on the Application

Prior to developing fresh features for an existing application, you should advertise the new feature on the current website and providing a link for more information. Like the Websites and application section above, you would measure the number of clicks to the number of visitors.

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