5 common mistakes when building an MVP

After your concept is approved (POC), one of the first actions to take your idea forward includes building a minimum viable product (MVP). 

An MVP is the most basic version of your idea, created to validate initiatives and discover user feedback from the beginning.

Even with such a rudimentary development approach and outcome, we have identified 5 reasons your MVP might not help validate your idea.

Deficient market research

The creation of an MVP is made by taking into consideration a user-centered approach. 

By identifying the main aspects of your desired application and doing a competitor’s analysis, you will start to collect data about your users. To set some guidelines for your idea, you should answer questions as: 

• On which platform and operating system will it work? 

• Which it’s the end goal? 

• Which pain points will this app solve?

• Does it need to use an external service? 

• How will you make revenue from it?

The discovered information should be used to consolidate the app, avoiding, this way, our habit of sticking with the initial idea we had in mind. 

If the answers aren’t utilized, someone else could implement them to provide what your users need before you/prior. 

Skipping the prototype step for MVPs

Prototyping is an early attempt to visualize solutions.

Here, we can trace the primary concept after gathering all the knowledge from the previous step. It is done by constructing a list of the most important features and wireframes.

Low-fidelity wireframes do the work but, to have a deeper understanding of your vision, the help of a UX/UI designer to develop high-fidelity wireframes could be a suitable fit. 

Skipping this step blurs the entire MVP process because users can’t provide feedback on a much more defined concept.

The lack of a solid development team

The help of a proficient development team can reduce expenses and time in the long run. 

Because a new product idea can either make your business grow as remarkable or shrink, especially in the startup stage, experienced assistance can do wonders.

If you leave this task to developers who don’t understand an MVP’s fundamentals, your ideas slowly lead to no results.

The main values you should consider when selecting a development team are:

• substantial expertise shown through numerous projects

• highly-specialized developers

• transparent approach when it comes to budget and archiving business goals

Not understanding how many features your MVP should have

Is a well-known mistake. 

Switching between too many or lacking features, and identifying the right number of features can be complicated. 

Because spending too many hours on this development stage can generate higher expenses, sticking to the main features that make your app accessible but innovative is the way to go.

In the end, an MVP should quickly get into use and deliver user feedback.

Perfectionism

Perfectionism is a mistake not only in the process of developing an MVP.

It slows your project outcome by overplanning and coming back to the same problems, without having a satisfying solution. That’s why having a dedicated software team near you, while making decisions, can save time.

Wrapping up

In the end, an MVP is a way to collect as much user feedback in the shortest time possible. This way, this important asset can come to life fast with the help of a skillful development team that provides full support during the entire process.