In Agile, MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product.
The Agile Minimum Viable Product is defined as the minimum number of features that a product should have in order to fulfill the customers requirements.
The Agile Minimum Viable Product is the simplest version of the product that the development team can build to deliver value.
Building and implementing the MVP product allows the customer to start using the product while the development team works on the other product features.
The rationale behind it is that, it is better to deliver a product that can be used right now rather than delivering a complete product at a later time.
It is also easier and cheaper to deliver a working product that the customers can use and send their feedback on, rather than delivering a complete product which is more expensive and difficult to make changes to.
The Agile MVP delivery is a continuous process that is repeatedly improved on based on the customers feedback.
What are the advantages of using MVP ?
The Minimum Viable Product is used due to its many advantages which include the following:
- It helps with faster delivery of a working product.
- It helps minimize effort due to continuous rework.
- It helps with product testing.
- It helps improve customer satisfaction.
- It helps build brand loyalty.
- It helps identify new features and bugs.
- It helps optimize resources and reduces waste.
How do you create a Minimum Viable Product?
A MVP is created just like any other product, the only difference is that the basic required features are prioritized and implemented instead of the complete list of features.
The MVP product delivery process has 4 steps and they are:
- The Business Needs: this is the first step in the MVP delivery process and it involves identifying and analyzing the business need. The business need can be triggered by a number of factors such as an organizational need, a customer’s need or a competitors product. Regardless of the source of the need, the business need has to be properly identified and analyzed to find out what needs to be achieved.
- Product Roadmap: the next step is to create the product roadmap. This involves identifying the target audience and which features they would want the product to have. It also involves identifying how the customers would interact with the product and which features need to be included in the product to complete the customers actions. These features would be prioritized and used to build and implement the MVP.
- Create a Pain and Gain map : the next step is to create a pain and gain map to identify your customers pains with the released product and also identify which features they like to add to the product. Identifying the pain can help guide what issues need to be addressed while identifying the gain can help guide the list of features that should be added and enhanced in future product releases.
- Adding the new features to the product: based on the analysis of the pain and gain map, new features would be built and added to the MVP. This would help improve the customers satisfaction and slowly transform the product from MVP to a finished product.