Many people connect MVP abbreviation with distinction provided by Microsoft or model-view-presenter pattern. But this is not a thing that I would describe in this post. I will continue topics connected with mobile application creation. To be more precisely – this post is about conception that is named minimum viable product.
I can give you many examples of ideas or projects which didn’t achieve success on global market even that they had a great potential. In case of each project reason of failure was different. Sometimes somebody has managed to release similar project to market before our solution have been ready. In other case the team has lost motivation to finish the idea. Sometimes the reason was very ordinary – you have run out of budget. But I think the worst scenario is when you have ready product and you are not able to find customers for it.
To avoid provided scenarios you can use MVP model. When you are starting doing some product you should focus on one main feature. This feature should be an essence of your application. This main feature should be the beginning to other elements in application. Of course selected feature should be coherent with customers’ needs. It should also have high quality and work without any errors. It should build positive relation with our users.
In case of mobile application you should try to connect the application name with the main feature. So the users could find you application easily.
At the beginning it could be hard to start using this approach. You will find a lot of reasons in your head against this solution. The first reason that comes to my mind is that the application has not been finished yet. You have a lot of things on your list that could be added to your application. But this is ok. First you need to change your approach. I wondered how many times you have changed release date of your application. I am sure that each time you were able to make something better in your application. But finally you managed to release it. I wonder what your reaction was…
… sometime you discovered that other similar applications are already in store. In other case you found out that only small piece of your application is being used by your users. And the worst scenario was that nobody has download provided application. All this cases have similar result – you wasted your time and money. Application is not generating assumed profits.
To avoid this situation I encourage you to try using MVP approach. At the beginning you should define key feature of our application. In the next step you need to plan actions that will need to be taken to created application providing this feature. As soon as it possible, when your application will be ready you should put it into store. And then you should observe reaction of users.
Thorough analysis of information that are coming from users, statistics and store should provide action points for future. You should be able to define next features that should be useful for the users. In some cases market reaction will not be as you have expected. Application will not be downloaded by users. This is also very important information for us. In this case you should consider two options – try to find why prepared application is not being downloaded and try to fix this issue or you can just stop working with this idea and try to find something else to do. But regardless of the decision you make, you will have information that can save a lot of money at early state of project.
And maybe one last thing. Very often the team is losing motivation during the whole process. This situation can be improved by getting positive feedback from you users at early state of project. This positive reaction can also provide you with additional energy that can help you to finish your application.
[…] about the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) concept. You can read a bit more about it in one of the previous articles. If you already know it, then probably your scope is minimal. So it means that it will be hard to […]