What is a minimum viable product?
As the name suggests, a minimum viable product is a product that is launched with just the most basic features required to showcase how it works and what it can potentially do and, in some cases, build hype as well.
If you want a more in-depth understanding of this topic, check out the FAQ section below:
Question #1: What are the benefits of developing a minimum viable product?
The biggest benefits of developing a minimum viable product include:
Rapid development times – Going this product route eliminates the need to build all the planned features in and do any polishing before launching anything, allowing you to get to the roll-out stage (albeit partial) significantly faster.
First-to-market advantage – Remember when Samsung first unveiled their foldable screens? Probably not, right? That is because it happened years before they ever launched their first foldable phone—and even then, it did not feel like an actual finished product.
Regardless, they are one of the first, if not the first, smart device makers to unveil the technology and talk about their plans to use it in their devices in the coming years, forcing everyone else to play catch up.
Guided development – Instead of wasting time and money doing trial-and-error—or worse, launching a product that nobody wants—going the minimum viable product route allows you to get feedback from actual users during the development stage, allowing you to build something that you know your end users would appreciate.
Question #2: What is the difference between a minimum viable product and a beta version?
The biggest difference between a minimum viable product and a beta version is the stage at which they are released.
A minimum viable product is designed to test your riskiest assumptions about your new product so you can build something that your target customers actually want. Your target testers at this stage are a small group of early adopters along with a super small internal audience.
A beta version, on the other hand, is built after the assumptions you tested during the minimum viable product stage are all validated. Your target at this stage is a subset of your actual end-users. Your goal is to get as much feedback as you can so you can polish the beta version into the final version the rest of your target users will get.
Question #3: What are the characteristics of a minimum viable product?
The primary characteristics of a minimum viable product are as follows:
- Valuable enough to generate interest because you need to get your initial group of testers and early adopters to want to try it out
- Has clear future benefit so you can keep early adopters on board all the way to launch day and beyond
- Has a built-in feedback loop so your developers have something to work with every step of the way
Question #4: Is developing this product better than conducting market surveys?
The short answer is that developing this product is not necessarily better than conducting market surveys.
While you definitely get more valuable insight as to what your target users want and/or need by actually having them use the product you are developing, you will still need to first conduct market surveys to identify gaps in the market that you could fill. The product development stage can only start once you have already found a gap and come up with an idea for a product that might fill it.
At the end of the day, the more information you have about what your target customers want, the higher your odds of successfully developing a product that can address it.
Question #5: What happens if this product reveals it is not what the market wants?
Depending on the reason that it is not what the market wants, you may have to either make drastic changes to it or completely abandon the project and go back to the drawing board. Either way, you will still end up saving significantly more time and money compared to if you fully developed the product first before checking if your target users actually want it.