MVP is not a product, but a process. Think it's wrong?
MVP is not just a product with a half cut-down feature. In fact, MVP is not a product at all. And this, of course, is not something that you did once and consider that the work is already finished. Most likely, you do not understand what it is.
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MVP is a process where you repeat everything time after time: define your hypotheses, find the fastest test options and use the results to change the strategy.
When you make a product, you initially have a lot of assumptions. You think that you know what users want, what they are looking for, what should be the design, what marketing strategy to use, what architecture will be most effective, how to monetize the product.
No matter how good you are, any of your hypotheses will still be wrong. Only there is one problem - you do not know which ones.
In the latest study of hundreds of startups, CB Insights determined that the main reason for the failure (42% of all cases) was the lack of market demand. Almost half of these startups spent months, or even years, making a product until they realized that their hypothesis was wrong — that someone was interested in their product at all.
The only way to test a hypothesis is to give a product to a potential customer as quickly as possible. And if you do it all the time, you will realize that most hypotheses fail. And you have to go back to the beginning each time, testing different hypotheses.
And this is not an innovation in product development. When you write a book or an essay, you spend a lot of time editing, revising. When writing code, you also recycle it several times. Every creative aspiration of a person requires a huge amount of trial and error.
In this world, who quickly finds errors and corrects them, he becomes the winner. Some people call this philosophy “fail fast” (fall out quickly). In TripAdviser, we call it “Speed ​​wins” (Speed ​​is an advantage). Eric Rise calls this technique “Lean” (thrifty), Kent Beck (one of the creators of Agile Manifesto) and other programmers call it Agile.
In fact, no matter how you call it. The most important thing is to determine as quickly as possible which of your hypotheses are erroneous, using the feedback of real users.
When you make a product, write code, or develop a marketing plan, you should always ask yourself a few questions:
What is the most doubtful hypothesis in the project?
How fast to check it out?
I advise you to read - Do you know what Growth Hacking is? [11 cases inside ]
Let's take an example, step by step. After it, you will understand what MVP is.
For example, you decided to make a product that will allow restaurateurs to create mobile applications for their establishments in a few clicks. The application will have a simple interface - drag and drop, ready-made templates, calendar of events, news feed, check-ins, photo gallery, real-time chat, integration with browser sites, social networks and Google maps.
And most importantly - the application will offer reservations, takeaway orders, and the use of coupons, from which you will withdraw a small percentage to monetize the product. It seems to be very cool!
You will find some friends who will become your co-founders. In an ideal situation (which will not happen in 99.9% of cases), “raise” some money from a well-to-do business angel, hide yourself in a room for 12 months and cut all these features.
If you're more pumped up, you'll cut down half of the features that you think are not paramount. And you can run your MVP in 8 months, not 12.
In both cases, you are likely to fail.
Why? Okay, considering how many assumptions you made, everything can be catastrophically wrong.
You spent months thinking through how to run a cool app for customers, not considering what the restaurateurs really want. Perhaps everything is much, much simpler: they want a responsive website that is easy to find in Google. And that's all. They don't need anything else.
Or you saw online chat for two weeks, but only after real tests you realized that restaurateurs prefer to communicate via e-mail and do not want to sit at the computer all day.
Or the worst thing - you saw that restaurateurs do not want to fight with these new technologies at all. And in general - use the mobile application. They have no particular interest in such a clever product.
8 months of work (or even 12, and maybe 24), in order to see all the weak points - this is too long and expensive. At best, such a loss will simply be a waste of time, at worst, it will destroy your business (and maybe life).
According to Peter Drucker, “There is nothing so meaningless as the creation of a useless product, a useless product.”
I advise you to read - Growth Hacking: 36 real-life cases - Part 1
Let's try the MVP process and estimate how it would be possible to avoid all the jambs. We will make the product gradually, asking ourselves two of the same questions at each stage:
What is the most doubtful hypothesis in the project?
How fast to check it out?
At the very beginning, the wildest assumption: Restaurateurs need such a mobile application
Therefore, the first MVP should be a draft of a mobile application - maybe even the one that will be done on the back of a restaurant napkin (as in the theme, yes?).
Walk around the restaurateurs in your area and ask if they are using new technologies in their field? And in general, do they have mobile apps? And if not, why not? Would they like it to themselves? How technically savvy are they? Do they understand the possible benefits?
Show them a mock-up (sketch), and consider whether this will be a good solution to their problems.
You can see that restaurateurs have little interest in making such a project a serious business. Yes, it's a shame. But the good news is that it cost you a couple of hours of conversation, instead of months of development.
On the other hand, you may find out that restaurateurs are not interested in a mobile application, but in a simple adaptive website. And this is progress!
I advise you to read - Startup Plotguru raised the landing conversion from 9% to 52%. Are you weak?
But you have not finished. Now you have to repeat the process to build the next MVP.
What is the most doubtful hypothesis in the project?
“Will restaurateurs want to pay for a responsive website?”
And how can you check it?
One of the ideas for the next MVP could be to create static pages for several interested restaurateurs to see how they react to it.
Do they like it? Are they impressed with the fact that the site is done in a couple of clicks? How much are they willing to pay so that they have the same resource yesterday?
Perhaps when the time comes to pay for the site, you will realize that restaurateurs are not very much ready to do this. The good thing is that you understood this in a few days, not a few months of dull development.
Or suppose you understand that they want to pay. You will pay for several months in advance - in cash or by check - launch their sites and ask for updates, if necessary, to write directly to an e-mail (i.e., you will make all changes on the site manually at this stage)
Yes, it requires a lot of effort on your part. Yes, it cannot be scaled to hundreds of clients. But if you are a small startup, do not be afraid to do the same. Let the first customers you will do everything manually, simulating an automatic service. And when you realize that people need your product and they will pay for it, then start automating all the processes.
I advise you to read - Case: Increase of registrations by 11.6% in the service Piktochart
What is the most doubtful hypothesis in the project?
This time, perhaps your marketing strategy to attract customers has worked. But you cannot go around all the restaurants in the world.
Then the question arises how to test this hypothesis on more people with minimal costs?
Your MVP can be a landing page that explains the essence of the product. Show simple websites of restaurants that you made before and encourage visitors to leave their contacts if they are interested. You can buy ads for several hundred bakosv, which would put traffic on the landing. And watch what comes next.
If potential customers do not even leave their mail, then they will not lay out a single dollar for your service . It is much easier to understand this by placing text and a few images on the landing page than to rewrite thousands of lines of code in the whole product!
The sooner you find mistakes, the less time you spend on useless, or who do not need things.
I advise you to read - 6 cases increase the conversion from the company Fiverr
When you design a product, create a marketing plan, or write code, always ask yourself:
What is the most doubtful hypothesis in the project?
How fast to check it out?
Just two simple questions that can save you a lot of time and money. Write down and hang them right in front of your workplace.
Original article: A Minimum Viable Product Is Not A Product, It's a Process
Read also our other popular articles:
1. How to increase conversion - 30 short tips for [internet marketers] (3000+ views)
2. They will help you find all the “killers” of the conversion - 10 reports in Google Analytics (5000+ views)
3. 100 ideas for A / B testing. Part One (2000+ views)
4. 100 ideas for A / B testing: Part Two (1000+ views)
5. How to find an idea for an A / B test: heat maps and polls (1000+ views)
MVP is not a product, but a process. Think it's wrong?
')
MVP is a process where you repeat everything time after time: define your hypotheses, find the fastest test options and use the results to change the strategy.
When you make a product, you initially have a lot of assumptions. You think that you know what users want, what they are looking for, what should be the design, what marketing strategy to use, what architecture will be most effective, how to monetize the product.
No matter how good you are, any of your hypotheses will still be wrong. Only there is one problem - you do not know which ones.
In the latest study of hundreds of startups, CB Insights determined that the main reason for the failure (42% of all cases) was the lack of market demand. Almost half of these startups spent months, or even years, making a product until they realized that their hypothesis was wrong — that someone was interested in their product at all.
The only way to test a hypothesis is to give a product to a potential customer as quickly as possible. And if you do it all the time, you will realize that most hypotheses fail. And you have to go back to the beginning each time, testing different hypotheses.
And this is not an innovation in product development. When you write a book or an essay, you spend a lot of time editing, revising. When writing code, you also recycle it several times. Every creative aspiration of a person requires a huge amount of trial and error.
In this world, who quickly finds errors and corrects them, he becomes the winner. Some people call this philosophy “fail fast” (fall out quickly). In TripAdviser, we call it “Speed ​​wins” (Speed ​​is an advantage). Eric Rise calls this technique “Lean” (thrifty), Kent Beck (one of the creators of Agile Manifesto) and other programmers call it Agile.
In fact, no matter how you call it. The most important thing is to determine as quickly as possible which of your hypotheses are erroneous, using the feedback of real users.
When you make a product, write code, or develop a marketing plan, you should always ask yourself a few questions:
What is the most doubtful hypothesis in the project?
How fast to check it out?
I advise you to read - Do you know what Growth Hacking is? [11 cases inside ]
MVP as a process in action.
Let's take an example, step by step. After it, you will understand what MVP is.
For example, you decided to make a product that will allow restaurateurs to create mobile applications for their establishments in a few clicks. The application will have a simple interface - drag and drop, ready-made templates, calendar of events, news feed, check-ins, photo gallery, real-time chat, integration with browser sites, social networks and Google maps.
And most importantly - the application will offer reservations, takeaway orders, and the use of coupons, from which you will withdraw a small percentage to monetize the product. It seems to be very cool!
You will find some friends who will become your co-founders. In an ideal situation (which will not happen in 99.9% of cases), “raise” some money from a well-to-do business angel, hide yourself in a room for 12 months and cut all these features.
If you're more pumped up, you'll cut down half of the features that you think are not paramount. And you can run your MVP in 8 months, not 12.
In both cases, you are likely to fail.
Why? Okay, considering how many assumptions you made, everything can be catastrophically wrong.
You spent months thinking through how to run a cool app for customers, not considering what the restaurateurs really want. Perhaps everything is much, much simpler: they want a responsive website that is easy to find in Google. And that's all. They don't need anything else.
Or you saw online chat for two weeks, but only after real tests you realized that restaurateurs prefer to communicate via e-mail and do not want to sit at the computer all day.
Or the worst thing - you saw that restaurateurs do not want to fight with these new technologies at all. And in general - use the mobile application. They have no particular interest in such a clever product.
8 months of work (or even 12, and maybe 24), in order to see all the weak points - this is too long and expensive. At best, such a loss will simply be a waste of time, at worst, it will destroy your business (and maybe life).
According to Peter Drucker, “There is nothing so meaningless as the creation of a useless product, a useless product.”
I advise you to read - Growth Hacking: 36 real-life cases - Part 1
Making an application by MPV process
Let's try the MVP process and estimate how it would be possible to avoid all the jambs. We will make the product gradually, asking ourselves two of the same questions at each stage:
What is the most doubtful hypothesis in the project?
How fast to check it out?
At the very beginning, the wildest assumption: Restaurateurs need such a mobile application
Therefore, the first MVP should be a draft of a mobile application - maybe even the one that will be done on the back of a restaurant napkin (as in the theme, yes?).
Walk around the restaurateurs in your area and ask if they are using new technologies in their field? And in general, do they have mobile apps? And if not, why not? Would they like it to themselves? How technically savvy are they? Do they understand the possible benefits?
Show them a mock-up (sketch), and consider whether this will be a good solution to their problems.
You can see that restaurateurs have little interest in making such a project a serious business. Yes, it's a shame. But the good news is that it cost you a couple of hours of conversation, instead of months of development.
On the other hand, you may find out that restaurateurs are not interested in a mobile application, but in a simple adaptive website. And this is progress!
I advise you to read - Startup Plotguru raised the landing conversion from 9% to 52%. Are you weak?
But you have not finished. Now you have to repeat the process to build the next MVP.
What is the most doubtful hypothesis in the project?
“Will restaurateurs want to pay for a responsive website?”
And how can you check it?
One of the ideas for the next MVP could be to create static pages for several interested restaurateurs to see how they react to it.
Do they like it? Are they impressed with the fact that the site is done in a couple of clicks? How much are they willing to pay so that they have the same resource yesterday?
Perhaps when the time comes to pay for the site, you will realize that restaurateurs are not very much ready to do this. The good thing is that you understood this in a few days, not a few months of dull development.
Or suppose you understand that they want to pay. You will pay for several months in advance - in cash or by check - launch their sites and ask for updates, if necessary, to write directly to an e-mail (i.e., you will make all changes on the site manually at this stage)
Yes, it requires a lot of effort on your part. Yes, it cannot be scaled to hundreds of clients. But if you are a small startup, do not be afraid to do the same. Let the first customers you will do everything manually, simulating an automatic service. And when you realize that people need your product and they will pay for it, then start automating all the processes.
I advise you to read - Case: Increase of registrations by 11.6% in the service Piktochart
We continue our MVP process.
What is the most doubtful hypothesis in the project?
This time, perhaps your marketing strategy to attract customers has worked. But you cannot go around all the restaurants in the world.
Then the question arises how to test this hypothesis on more people with minimal costs?
Your MVP can be a landing page that explains the essence of the product. Show simple websites of restaurants that you made before and encourage visitors to leave their contacts if they are interested. You can buy ads for several hundred bakosv, which would put traffic on the landing. And watch what comes next.
If potential customers do not even leave their mail, then they will not lay out a single dollar for your service . It is much easier to understand this by placing text and a few images on the landing page than to rewrite thousands of lines of code in the whole product!
The sooner you find mistakes, the less time you spend on useless, or who do not need things.
I advise you to read - 6 cases increase the conversion from the company Fiverr
Dude, this is MVP
When you design a product, create a marketing plan, or write code, always ask yourself:
What is the most doubtful hypothesis in the project?
How fast to check it out?
Just two simple questions that can save you a lot of time and money. Write down and hang them right in front of your workplace.
Original article: A Minimum Viable Product Is Not A Product, It's a Process
Read also our other popular articles:
1. How to increase conversion - 30 short tips for [internet marketers] (3000+ views)
2. They will help you find all the “killers” of the conversion - 10 reports in Google Analytics (5000+ views)
3. 100 ideas for A / B testing. Part One (2000+ views)
4. 100 ideas for A / B testing: Part Two (1000+ views)
5. How to find an idea for an A / B test: heat maps and polls (1000+ views)
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/298830/
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