Developing powerful digital products takes time, commitment, and attention to detail.
Out of those three, product teams mostly lack the first one. Markets move fast, and competitors constantly convince new customers, not you, to do business with them.
To survive, you must move fast. But how to deliver valuable, eye-catching product ideas in such a fast-paced environment? MVP development is your best friend here.
In this article, we’ll explain what it is and how to plan to build an MVP for your product.
What is MVP development?
Minimum viable product (MVP) involves developing a new product or website with enough core features to satisfy early adopters’ expectations. Only after you validate the concept with early adopters’ feedback you build the final set of features.
Creating a minimum viable product is a core initiative of the lean startup approach. You noticed a problem and found a solution to it.
But how will you know if it will work in your target market? Or how exactly should you resolve it?
MVP lets you gather all those insights. It shows the core aspects of your solution to the users experiencing a pre-defined problem. You can see how they act and hear their response to your product before spending money on full development.
As you might’ve noticed, MVP is similar to experimenting. And you’re right – it’s a way of testing the most significant part of your solution.
You might wonder, though: “What if I already am 100% sure my idea’s great? Should I care about building an MVP?”
Yes, you should. Let us explain:
Why does MVP development matter?
The main benefits of MVP development are the time and cost savings it can bring, but the process helps in many more ways. Here are a few of the main reasons devs and team leaders everywhere should consider MVP development:
Quantifying user interest
An MVP is the best source of validated learning about customers. You should do it, even when you think your business idea is 100% unique. Why?
While launching your product, you spend a lot of time with it. You break down the ideas, visualize the features, and constantly pitch them to others around you.
This inspiring atmosphere might make you miss essential gaps in your thinking about your target market.
This is known as confirmation bias. This is a tendency to search for, interpret, and favor information that confirms our beliefs.
Building an MVP quickly straps your viewpoint away from it. You invite people outside your circle to test and give feedback on your product. Feedback can be harsh, but it’s essential to avoid wasting time on ideas that won’t give a good return on investment.
Shortening development time (and cost)
Building an MVP literally saves you money. It lets you spot the most significant preferences in your target market and adjust your final product accordingly.
Suppose you’re making a fitness app. You have to choose how to include a rest timer, a key feature.
One way involves a voice-activated rest timer that users can trigger by saying the app’s name out loud.
The other requires users to open the app and click a button to start the rest timer.
You presume the voice-activated timer will be more beneficial as you can do it hands-free. You build an MVP with it and approach a few users for feedback.
Turns out, your presumption was incorrect. The users got annoyed by the feature because they felt weird talking to their phones while in the gym full of others.
Now, imagine not creating a basic MVP and choosing to add advanced voice activation to your product instead. It’s a recipe for disaster.
The role of MVP is to give you the maximum amount of validated learning about the needs your customers have. It will save you from failing to make crucial decisions about your product.
Of course, the benefits listed above don’t matter if you fall into any of the pitfalls plaguing many dev teams. Let’s see what to avoid while working on your MVP before you start putting it together:
MVP development mistakes to avoid
Each of the mistakes mentioned below can derail your MVP development efforts completely. Thankfully, once discovered, they are pretty easy to avoid:
1. Too many features
Clarity and focus are critical when you develop the minimum viable version of the product. Lack of clarity about product features and target users can lead to excessive development and overextension.
This also translates directly to overspending and taking much longer to complete initial development.
If you don’t focus on the main features of your product, it can become too broad. This means it may include unnecessary features that your target audience may not be interested in.
Ideally, an MVP team should follow the MosCoW prioritization method. It categorizes features based on their significance. The categories are:
- Must-Have: Here, you put all features without which the launch is pointless. This includes critical features, legal-related features, or safety measures.
- Should-Have: All high-priority features. You can add them before the launch, but you’re not destined for disaster without them.
- Could-Have: Optional features, not 100% necessary for success
- Won’t-Have: Unnecessary features or features you’ll add in the later development stage of your product.
For MVP, including the must-have features.
Many new users mainly focus on the MVP’s performance. But when companies focus on other features, such as visual design, they often do it at the cost of performance. As a result, the MVP does not deliver the results users want.
2. Undefined goals
One of the most common MVP mistakes is a lack of clarity in project goals. Without clear goals, it’s challenging to determine which functionalities and features you need to add to your MVP.
Undefined goals also result in scope creep. Since the plans are ambiguous, there’s a risk of adding unnecessary features in the MVP.
Defining your product goals and objectives is a foolproof way to avoid scope creep. When everyone in the development team follows the same interpretation, they can prevent design and functionality inconsistencies.
Organizing a scoping workshop is a great way to ensure everyone is on the same page. It’s a full-day session in which all parties sit together to discuss the project vision and details.
One of the most common MVP mistakes is a lack of clarity in project goals. Without clear goals, it’s challenging to determine which functionalities and features you need to add to your MVP.
Undefined goals also result in scope creep. Since the plans are ambiguous, there’s a risk of adding unnecessary features in the MVP.
3. Poor project management
Poor project management results in missed deadlines and delays in delivering the minimum viable product. But what counts as poor project management? Some common issues include:
- Ineffective planning
- Inadequate resources
- Poor scheduling
- Inefficient resource use
- Missed project milestones
Missed timelines also lead to cost overruns, which can further strain the project financially. It may also jeopardize project viability.
Ineffective project management also becomes the root cause of team disengagement. When you don’t design roles and responsibilities adequately, you need more support and guidance from managers.
And that’s when a lack of motivation creeps in.
4. Limited budget
Limited financial resources also create hurdles in app development, leading to compromised features and quality. Here are some components you should include in your budget:
- Development Costs: These include costs like bug fixing, coding, and testing. You may have to hire developers or work with a development agency.
- Infrastructure Costs: You’ll have to spend money on cloud services like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. Consider the additional costs of server capacity, bandwidth, and storage.
- Technology and Tools: Factor in the costs of third-party frameworks, tools, and libraries you’ll need for development. You may also have to spend money on payment gateways and analytics platforms. Don’t forget about customer support tools.
- User Experience/Design: It’s also important to allocate some of your budgets to user experience and design. Hire a UX specialist or designer for the job.
Additionally, allocate the budget to marketing, promotion, legal and compliance, contingency, support, and maintenance.
5. Hiring the wrong team
One of the overlooked MVP development mistakes is having the wrong team onboard. Your team forms the backbone of the development process. So, it must be competent, experienced, and have the proper skillset.
Make sure your team has the right mix of non-tech and tech professionals. These include product managers, marketers, project managers, designers, and developers.
Plus, the team should implement a lean structure for Agile development. Focus on clearly mapping out the value stream and creating a flow that reduces as many bottlenecks as possible.
A competent team and cohesive structure are necessary to ensure timely development, good-quality products, and increased costs. Moreover, the team must understand your business vision and objectives to meet your target audience’s needs.
When preventing SaaS MVP mistakes, make hiring the right software development company your priority. Ensure the company has a decent record of delivering high-quality MVP in software development.
It also helps to choose a company with a record of creating an MVP for your industry and niche. Share your project objectives and visions with your partner to prevent ambiguity.
6. Inadequate infrastructure
When building an MVP, it’s important to have infrastructure elements such as:
- Cloud platforms: like AWS or Microsoft Azure
- Virtual machines or containers: like Azure Virtual Machine and Docker
- Database management systems: like Amazon RDS and MySQL
- Networking components: such as firewalls, domain name configuration, virtual networks, and load balancers
- Authentication mechanisms: like Azure Active Directory
- Auto-scaling groups and load-balancing tools
- Monitoring and logging solutions: like Azure Monitor and Amazon CloudWatch
Lack of adequate infrastructure leads to downtime, security issues, and poor performance.
For example, your data could be vulnerable to malicious attacks if you do not have a reliable database management system.
Likewise, the absence of cloud-based services reduces security and scalability.
7. Scope creep
Scope creep means adding new features continuously to the initial project scope. In MVP development, the primary goal is to quickly create a minimal product version to get early validation and user feedback.
But scope creep prolongs this process, lengthening the time-to-market. Since the product doesn’t enter the market in due time, there’s a lag in feedback collection.
Scope creep also causes resource drain. Expanding the project scope without proper resource allocation can impact the budget and timeline.
8. Technology limitations
Technology constraints limit your development team’s ability to build specific features, resulting in delays.
For instance, SaaS products require technology stacks that handle large data volumes and user loads. However, it becomes difficult to accommodate a growing user base without this infrastructure and technology.
Also, users want your SaaS product to have excellent performance. However, the resulting performance will also suffer if the underlying technology is lacking. Users will experience inefficient data processing and slow response times, resulting in negative user feedback.
Most importantly, if your product tech lacks robust integration capabilities, it cannot exchange data or connect with other platforms. That further limits an MVP’s performance and functionality.
9. Regulatory compliance
Regulatory compliance is a two-edged sword in the MVP development process. On the one hand, a lack of compliance results in legal consequences and reputational damage.
On the other hand, compliance adds more time and cost to your project. For instance, if you must comply with HIPAA and GDPR, you must create security measures such as encryption and authentication.
How do you ensure regulatory compliance without breaking the bank? There are two main options.
First, you can use a compliance-ready platform. For instance, you may use a cloud service that is already compliant with your relevant framework.
Secondly, you can use open-source and accessible solutions. Also, hire experienced external consultants and IT teams that can help you stay compliant without overspending.
10. Lack of testing and quality assurance
Inefficient quality assurance and testing can be the most crippling MVP creation pitfalls. Here are some problems lack of testing can cause:
- User Experience Issues: If you do not test the product properly, it may have performance, bugs, or usability issues. These problems result in poor user experience, driving away potential users.
- Functionality Gaps: Without proper testing, you won’t be able to identify functionality gaps in your product. For example, you may not realize the shortcomings in your data processing or other critical product operations.
- Security Risks: Lack of quality assurance also increases the risk of security. Your product may be susceptible to unauthorized access, data breaches, attacks, etc. These incidents tarnish your reputation and lower product performance.
Not performing quality assurance also puts you in technical debt. The issues you didn’t address in the past will become problems in the future.
Consequently, they introduce complexity to the product. They also increase project costs and may expose you to nasty surprises down the line.
11. Lack of user feedback
Not getting sufficient user feedback is one of the most common minimum viable product mistakes. User feedback can shape your product design, aligning it to user needs.
Without proper user feedback, you end up with an inaccurate product-market fit. Instead of hearing what users are saying, you will tailor your product to your assumptions, which can be wrong.
Without user feedback and market research, you also don’t know which features to prioritize. Suppose you’re creating an app for ride-hailing. You might focus on the user interface and look and feel, but if users are more interested in ride options, you’re wasting your time.
Lack of user feedback also gives you nothing to work with in terms of product improvements. If you don’t know what users are struggling with, how would you know what to change, add, or improve?
That’s why it’s essential to use user feedback to improve your product. You can leverage user feedback to:
- Optimize product functionality
- Improve customer retention
- Identify pain points and improve them
- Validate product-market fit
- Enhance customer engagement and satisfaction
- Allow iterative product development
- Address user requirements
12. Rigidity with your idea
Another MVP development mistake you need to keep in mind is obsessing over your idea. Let’s say you’re hell-bent on perfecting your vision. You think your idea is perfect.
You may over-engineer and over-feature your idea, creating an over-expensive product. But what if the consumers want something different? After all, who are you creating the product for?
If the end user is not happy with it, there’s no point in creating even the ‘best’ MVP per your standard. So, being rigid with your idea is not the right approach.
Instead, be ready to steer from pre-determined plans and adapt to the feedback. It will help you cater your product to the end user’s needs.
Avoiding these MVP mistakes is critical to ensuring MVP creation within time, budget, and in accordance with user feedback.
13. Lack of prototyping
Many teams make the mistake of assuming minimum viable products require no working prototypes before being pushed out to the public. Others travel even further in the wrong direction and assume the two concepts are interchangeable.
Prototyping helps emphasize the actual viability of your MVP before it reaches the market.
Not investing your time in building a prototype can damage your brand image if things go wrong with your initial build.
14. Targeting the wrong user segment
There’s no use trying to sell a great product to a group of people who don’t want or need it.
Instead of making this major mistake and jeopardizing your business model, you should first validate the market demand for your proposed product and proceed only if there’s enough demand for your product to thrive.
This involves interviewing your target customers and carefully analyzing the niche for its potential before putting any code together.
15. Choosing an unsustainable business model
Even a magnificent MVP targeting the perfect audience will produce poor profits if your business model just doesn’t make sense.
Your product might benefit from a subscription-based pricing model or tiered offerings for different types of customers.
Choosing the model that can make your product successful involves learning as much as possible about potential customers and catering to their interests.
16. Waiting too long or “until it’s perfect”
It’s easy to fall into the trap of perfectionism. Plucking out potential problems before you drop your fledgling product out of the nest may seem like the right thing, but doing too much too soon is also a bad idea.
Thinking you can create a perfect product the first time you try is a recipe for disappointment and disaster.
Without actual feedback from customers, your assumptions are little more than educated guesses, and your “perfect” product (should you ever succeed in completing it) could be more flawed than you could ever have foreseen.
Planning to make mistakes and adjust iteratively to feedback is a much more practical approach to development than pushing for perfection from the start.
Simplify MVP development
MVP development involves many moving parts, but it doesn’t need to be a slog from start to finish. Your MVP stage can be smooth if you’re open to guidance, taking you from idea to launch.
With years of experience under our belt, we’ve become experts in SaaS product development. We understand the challenges and have crafted a unique, risk-managed methodology to build successful MVPs.
Ready to put your idea in the hands of the experts? Visit our MVP Development Service page and see why so many trust us with their vision.
