Role of Minimum Viable Product in Agile

In a test-and-error environment that is, the person who can detect errors the fastest is the winner. A few people consider this strategy “fail fast”. 

Whatever you prefer to call it, the key is to discover what assumptions you have about the product are incorrect by receiving feedback from real customers as soon as you can.

The Minimum Viable Product in Agile approach requires the division of the development process into small sprints. This allows to limit risks and react to any changes required swiftly.

Since Minimum Viable Product in Agile development is based on the idea of an iterative process that is based on feedback from customers The MVP is a key element for agile design.

The process of creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) can help deliver an innovative product that has enough features that will satisfy early adopters, which enables them to get valuable feedback, as well as develop a complete set of features for later.

The MVP concept is mainly used in the field of software to test whether the product is viable. If you are looking for a firm to develop your MVP specifically for your needs, look into the following software development firm.

Why do we utilize Agile and what is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?

The majority of software that is created today is built using Agile methodologies. In the agile context, you’ll frequently be hearing the term Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

The term “simple” refers to the smallest elaborate thing you can create that addresses the need sufficient to meet the needs of most of your customers. It will also verify your product’s market.

If you had to consider the main purpose you’re trying to help customers achieve What’s the most basic product you could build to help them accomplish the purpose?

Let’s suppose you were back in time and you were creating the initial model of an app that was designed for the newspaper. The primary function of an app is to provide information to its readers. This is why the simplest product to create could be an index of headlines from the news as well as a button to refresh.

The key to a success with an MVP is to focus on the main benefit the app offers with fresh information instead of spending your time creating other features for the app.

Be aware that MVP does not mean that the product isn’t good. It’s true that it’s efficient in its work however, it should concentrate on just a few fundamental aspects.

What are the advantages of producing the Minimum Viable Product in Agile methodology?

An important distinction between Agile and other approaches is the fact that Agile utilizes MVPs. In an Agile approach, you design the most basic thing you can collect data on the way customers use it and then improve the product, if necessary.

This allows you to be productive, creating only the features your customers need and use, rather than spending time creating features that customers don’t want.

Compare this to other methods of development of products. If you employ other methods could result in working for long hours trying to design your “perfect” product with every possibility of feature and then when it’s released on the market,, you realize that your customers don’t utilize many of the features you believed they might.

Here’s an example of a flexible minimum-viable product (MVP):

Drew Houston – the CEO of Dropbox was the one who decided to design an MVP of the cloud storage startup, in the form of video.

They created an explainer video and then shared it with their networks to see how the reactions of people. The video, which ran for three minutes, described the concept behind Dropbox and explained how it can help users.

Following the release of the video, the company saw sign-ups increase from 5,000 to 75,000 over the course of the night for “early access” – all without the actual product.

The following are the major advantages of building your Minimum Viable Product in Agile :

Consumer Initial Research

The faster your product gets out to the user you want to reach and the quicker you can receive feedback and evaluate the customers’ needs and challenges. If they don’t consider your MVP useful, you’ll have the opportunity to change direction and try out other benefits.

Or, if the reverse is true, then you’ll be sure that the new features will be useful to the clients you want to target and you’ll be able to proceed. If you’re in a worst-case scenario you could freeze the project to minimize your losses.

Testing Stage

The most significant benefit of developing an MVP is the fact that it permits testing different business concepts and models.

If you offer a basic function rather than a feature-rich product, you can determine whether the product’s concept is in line with your business’s strategy, giving you the chance to modify the direction of a product in response to findings.

In contrast to feature-driven products, once the MVP launches and you are able to use the capability to know the types of social groups that comprise the largest number and how they interact with the app, as well as the ways you can profit from the product.

Cost Efficiency

The high-quality items are the product of many years of research and development and are priced at a fair price. Because the products were developed repeatedly over a long period and the costs are distributed across the duration.

The MVP method also assists in reducing costs by making sure that the product is not becoming complex. As the product gains greater traction and collects more details about the direction that the product is headed it is possible to make investments more or less.

The Minimum Viable Product in Agile Development Process

After you’ve figured out what’s an MVP and the reason it is utilized in Agile and the benefits then let’s examine the  steps to create an MVP.

Determine who you’re helping and what problem you’re solving

When creating a new version of a brand new product, most people aren’t as thorough in defining the problem they’re trying to resolve and then articulating why the problems are crucial. If this isn’t done the product might be unable to identify opportunities and use up resources. This is the reason you have to be more proficient in answering the correct questions, so you can tackle the correct issues.

Analyze Your Competitors

When you’ve discovered the problem you’re trying to solve, it’s time to examine what other companies are doing to solve this problem – or even trying to resolve it. In this case, it is evident that you must perform an analysis of your competitors to determine if similar products are available on the market.

Keep in your mind that even if you do not believe you have direct competition, your trust in the distinctiveness of the product you offer will be the basis of confidence when introducing your product onto the market.

Create a user flow, wireframe, and design

Determining the flow of users for your product will require that you focus solely on the primary objective. To determine the primary user flow we need to first define the steps in the process. This is easy since all you have to do is outline the steps needed to achieve the main objective that your solution will achieve.

This is the time it is not necessary to focus on features. Instead, you should concentrate on the basics such as the kinds of objectives your users are seeking when using your product and their expectations.

When you’re finished with defining the flow of users then you can proceed to wireframing. It’s an illustration of a website or an application. Wireframes are layouts which outline the kind of interface elements that will be able to find prominently on pages.

Wireframing Example

The design of your User Interface (UI) integrates ideas from visual design, interaction design and information design. This is where you can build the knowledge you gained in previous phases to design a user experience that will amaze and delight the user.

At Brisk Logic, We are at the point where we have our first prototype completed (usually the mock-up can be clicked) and we conduct user testing. Testing users is crucial for the success of the brand new application. When we have the results of testing with users completed, we will re-create the wireframes and test them with users.

Once the wireframes have been tested, then you can move to the design stage which will differ for every device iOS, Android, or Web.

Analyze Your Features

Did you consider the fact that greater than 45 per cent of the features that are built into software products are seldom or never utilized?

After you’ve created your flow of users, you’re able to begin creating a more comprehensive list of features that you’ll need for each stage, while taking into consideration the stats.

Once you’ve laid out the options for each step, you’ll need to determine their priority. The most crucial step you’d like your users to take? This is your primary feature.

One method for determining the priority of features can be described as Moscow which can be used to determine which tasks to finish first, which ones to complete later, and which ones to leave out. Another way to gauge the importance of features is based on economic value (time to create in comparison to. desirable to have in comparison to. costs)

Development & Testing

After you’ve learned the key features that make up your minimal viable product (MVP) now is the opportunity to implement them into the test. When you are in the development stage it is time to examine your product and try to improve its performance.

After approving Wireframes, you can begin to work on the database setup, architecture and configuration and API development. Administration, and the rest of the back-end.

Beta and Alpha testing could be helpful in this regard as they are among the most well-known methods to test the performance of the software in various situations. It is important to ensure that you align your testing with the modifications that impact the user experience in general.

As a rule, you must run some of the tests below in a monitored setting before launching your app:

• Functionality Testing
• Testing usability
• Tests for compatibility
• Crowd Testing
• Interface Testing
• Performance Testing
• Security testing

During the process of development, you must test continuously every feature you implement.

For instance, at Brisk Logic, we create mobile apps. Releases of beta builds are released to Google beta/alpha testing as well as to Apple’s Test Flight. Test builds for internal testing are available in the App center (an officially-licensed tool provided by Microsoft).

If you are sure that the “release candidate” (a product that’s ready to be released) is available, we conduct beta testing, either closed or open in which we invite the most relevant users to the beta testing program, and we solicit feedback on features and bugs.

Bring market-ready products to market on a regular basis or you’ll fail

If you are able to validate the MVP, you can begin considering the product’s potential and then expand. In this stage, you have the option of raising funds to help you reach the market quicker or you fail.

If it’s a mobile app typically, we conduct a “soft launch” when we publish an MVP for download to AppStore as well as Google Play but don’t encourage any kind of marketing for the app at this moment.

As the app gains many more users, bugs might appear and we’ll be sure to address them as soon as possible. We typically publish new versions every other day. When the application is stable and we are able to maintain a crash-free rate of above 99.9 per cent, we suggest starting with marketing to gain more users.

Data is crucial and that’s the reason we suggest monitoring user behavior using Mix panel as well as Google Firebase analytics so that we can see how users actually use the application.

The process of developing the product never ends. The most important thing is to seek out user feedback and then iterate the product. If we have more users, we conduct A/B tests in order to evaluate different options and increase engagement.

Conclusion

At Brisk Logic, we’ve created more than 120 MVPs over the past 10 years. So we’ve had sufficient experience to know which MVPs can scale and which ones die or burn.

We understand that it can be difficult to create an outline, a document or wireframes for your MVP idea. So don’t hesitate to reach out to us, and we’ll be more than happy to give you some tips for free.