Minimum viable product (MVP): From basic validation to MAP mastery

The importance of building an MVP

The last thing you want to do when building a new product is put the cart before the horse and go all in on an unproven idea.

Creating a product hypothesis and building an minimum viable product (MVP) around it is the critical step that precedes a full-scale product launch, providing a low-risk experimentation platform to assess audience response and guarantee (or as close to guarantee as possible) the most efficient use of time and company resources.

By developing an MVP, a company can:

• Validate their ideas in the market with minimal financial risk
• Maximize return on investment/return on risk
• Prevent unnecessary time and effort wastage
• Test the business concept with its most essential features
• Use market validation to work toward securing stakeholder or investor support

Another huge benefit of MVPs?

Pricing.

A minimum viable product can help your team develop and test monetization strategies, like learning if users are willing to pay for the product at all or finding out what they think about paying for upgrades through in-app purchases.

This iterative process helps confirm that you’re building products that truly resonate with your target audience, minimizing the risk of failure while optimizing resources with the least effort.

Testing key assumptions with minimal risk

Minimum viable product = validated learning

An MVP gives you the opportunity to examine the feasibility of business ideas by either confirming or refuting any assumptions you’ve made — all at minimal risk.

By following the ‘build-measure-learn’ process (another gem from Lean Startup), businesses can prioritize the riskiest assumptions and gather maximum validated learning about customers with minimal investment.

The result? A low-risk approach focused on developing features based on their importance to users and ensuring resources aren’t wasted on features that may just be window dressings.

Perhaps the lowest risk way to validate an idea is a smoke test.

As digital experience optimization firm The Good put it:

"By providing quick and early feedback on your ideas, functions, or products, smoke testing allows you to validate concepts without diving headlong into full-scale development. This helps you make informed decisions and reduce the risk of costly mistakes"

It can just be a website that showcases what you intend to create, allowing you to gauge interest via metrics like clicks, pre-sales and crowdfunding.

Iterative improvement

A minimum viable product can test core functionalities without investing in full automation, allowing rapid iterations and valuable insights into user behavior, especially for ideas that would require sophisticated tech in their most complete version.

The MVP process ensures a business can build a solid foundation for growth by prioritizing what truly matters to their users at every stage.

Without a consistently validated development process, you’re essentially building in the dark.

Gathering early user feedback

Initial feedback is priceless for shaping a product and confirming it caters to real user needs. Moreover, involving early adopters in the ideation stage can help validate critical product features faster, allowing your team to build a more complete product.

Analyzing what customers are telling you about an early version of your product also clues you in on specific features that need improvement.

Startups or companies that are creating a new product or service should leverage these insights to guide the direction of further development and fine-tune their product-market.

This minimum viable product feedback loop is essential for understanding user behavior and continually enhancing the product to better meet customer demands.

Cost and time efficiency

The whole idea of an MVP is to economize and, well, minimize cost, time and effort by concentrating on crucial features and facilitating swift market assessment.

This quickens the pace of development and opens the door to attracting early investor or venture capital interest, faster.

By concentrating on primary features, a business can reinvest earnings from initial versions to evolve more advanced functionalities gradually.

You can use a product features mind map template to help guide the process.

Earlier market entry

Investing time on a minimum viable product (MVP) rather than a full-fledged product ultimately gives you the best opportunity to get your product on the market faster – and in a way that more closely aligns with what customers are looking for.

A win for you, a win for users and a win for investors.

Steps to develop a successful MVP

Developing successful minimum viable products is a straightforward process:

1. Identify the problem and target audience
2. Define core features and value proposition
3. Build a prototype
4. Develop the features
5. Test and launch the MVP
6. Collect feedback and iterate

The trick here is to put emphasis on the V while not ignoring the M.

Identify the problem and target audience

You’re not building a product just for the sake of it, right?

The idea is to make something that solves a genuine problem and relieves customer pain points.

Don’t gloss over this, the biggest reason startups fail is poor product-market fit.

Making sure you build something useful means understanding the specific problems or challenges your customers face, and two, defining your ideal customer profile by identifying their demographics and behaviors and building a user persona.

For example, the struggle to find free stock photos for business use led to the creation of Pexels.com, highlighting how recognizing a common problem can lead to a successful product.

Lean into customer development interviews, user interviews and focus groups for uncovering deeper insights into frustrations and needs of your target audience.

Conduct market research to validate the problems, confirm there’s a genuine demand for a solution and paint a picture of who you’re solving that problem for.

Define core features and value proposition

Determine the essential aka minimum features needed to address the identified problem and provide real value to your customers.

The customer pain points you pinpointed should inform the features you add. Using tools like the Kano model, feature buckets or the MoSCoW method can help prioritize features by balancing their value against implementation difficulty.

You want to emphasize the core value of the product without overcomplicating it, ensuring that your minimum viable product has a clear and compelling value proposition that resonates with your target audience.

Develop, build and launch MVP

With a well-defined feature list, a real problem to solve and a value proposition that makes it worth a user’s while, it’s time to build the MVP.

You’ll want to develop a simple prototype first, focusing on building the core features you identified in the previous steps and using wireframes or mockups to represent the UX/UI.

This prototype serves as a preliminary model of your product, allowing you to run MVP tests and refine your ideas before full-scale development.

The point here is to be able to communicate your vision to stakeholders and provide a tangible basis for customer feedback while avoiding an overcommitment of resources or unnecessary complexity.

The process of developing and rolling out an MVP boils down to:

• Establishing a definitive deadline to maintain focus and prioritize vital features.
• Drawing a map of the business ecosystem to display all users, define the value they receive, illustrate financial transactions and show product distribution channels
• Getting your MVP released to a small segment of your target audience to validate utility to customers and begin user testing

Tip for building your website: If there’s a website you’re particularly inspired by, use our visual sitemap generator to import its structure and plan your site navigation similarly.

Gather feedback and iterate

Going from hypothesis to reality is where the rubber meets the road and with the first version of the minimum viable product launched, it’s time for your team to start collecting customer feedback.

Conducting thorough user testing to gather feedback is a continuous task that helps you identify any issues or areas for improvement.

It’s where you start to learn how well your product meets user needs and expectations in a real-world setting. Humble yourself to the process and remember to not be married to any initial assumptions you may’ve made that kicked off the MVP in the first place.

The feedback you and your team gather is a goldmine for a product manager as it’ll quite literally be the guide for the direction to take your product and dictates the required adjustments and refinements you’ll need to make.

This is build-measure-learn in action and the iterative process ensures that the product evolves based on user needs and preferences.

If the MVP proves successful, it’s time to start planning to scale the product, considering additional features, broader market release and long-term strategy. You’ll also want to ramp up marketing and build out an effective content workflow to properly promote your product.

How to gather feedback

Knowing what users think is a cornerstone of the minimum viable product process, providing invaluable insights and a clear direction to guide product development and refinement.

Here are some tools and techniques to effectively collect this feedback:

1. Surveys: Whether it’s SurveyMonkey, Google Forms, TypeForm or any other survey platform out there, they all allow you to create custom questionnaires that capture user opinions and experiences. Surveys are particularly useful for identifying common pain points and gauging overall satisfaction.
2. User interviews: One-on-one interviews with users are more time intensive but they provide qualitative insights that a survey never could. These conversations can uncover far more nuanced aspects of user experiences that surveys might miss. It’s as simple as setting up a Zoom call.
3. Analytics: Tools like Google Analytics, Mixpanel and Hotjar help track how users interact with your product, providing data on how they navigate, where they spend the most time and where they bounce.

Ideally, if you have the bandwidth and capital, using a mix of all three will give you the most comprehensive view of user behavior.

Best practices for collecting and analyzing feedback

Knowing some of the tools and methods is one thing, maximizing the quality of data you get is another and it requires a strategic approach.

Here are some best practices to ensure you get the most out of your feedback efforts:

1. Define clear objectives: Before collecting, establish clear objectives. What specific info do you need? Whether you’re looking to validate a feature or understand user pain points, having a clear goal will guide your collection process and get you the most relevant data possible.
2. Ask the right questions: Not much hope of getting good answers if you’re asking the wrong questions. Spend time building the right ones and note that open-ended questions give you qualitative data, while closed-ended questions are useful for quantitative analysis. Balance both types to get a well-rounded understanding.
3. Segment your audience: Different user segments might have different needs and experiences. Segmenting your audience lets you tailor your questions and analyze responses more effectively. This segmentation can be based on demographics, user behavior or other relevant criteria.
4. Frequent touchpoints: This is an ongoing process, not a one-time event. Regular touchpoints with users help track changes in user sentiment and identify issues early. This continuous feedback loop is vital for iterative development and continuous improvement.
5. Analyze and iterate (fast) : Collecting customer feedback is great…but then what? You don’t want to stay in the MVP stage for long, this is your company at its most nimble so quickly analyze the data to identify trends and actionable insights. Use this analysis to make informed decisions about product adjustments. Prioritize changes based on the impact and feasibility, always making sure that customer feedback directly informs your development roadmap.
6. Close the loop: After acting on user insights, close the loop by communicating back to users. Let them know how their input has influenced the product. This not only builds trust and loyalty but also encourages ongoing participation in the feedback process.

Common types of minimum viable products

MVPs come in numerous shapes, each intended to examine assumptions with the least amount of investment possible.

The most common types are landing pages, Concierge MVPs, Wizard of Oz MVPs and Piecemeal MVPs. These low-fidelity minimum viable products, like simple apps or simply an explainer video, allow businesses to gauge interest and collect useful feedback without significant development.

Each is designed to validate ideas in different ways.

Landing pages

Design credit: Landing page design by Ali Sayed, sourced from Dribbble.

Landing page MVPs are a low-key, cost-effective way of introducing a product concept to visitors and allowing them to choose potential options like subscription plans. This sort of minimum viable product serves two key purposes; gathering an initial customer base and measuring unique value propositions.

The goal, as with any MVP, is to validate interest through email signups or simulated (or real) purchases, with conversion rates helping determine if there’s sufficient demand for the product.

It’s not uncommon to run paid ads or generate targeted traffic to test interest in a product and track metrics to validate assumptions and get valuable insights into user interest and potential demand.

Some popular landing page options:

• Pre-launch page: Gauges interest and builds an email list of potential users
• Explainer video: Validates the concept and engages users with visuals of the product
• Single feature page: Tests the appeal of a specific feature and allowing you to gather targeted feedback on its importance to users
• Crowdfunding page: Pages on sites like GoFundMe validate ideas through financial backing
• Interactive demo page: Provides hands-on preview and ability to collect customer feedback on usability and key features
• Survey page: Directly gather user insights and validate assumptions about the product
• Waitlist landing page: Builds anticipation and measures demand by tracking sign-ups for early access

After proving the idea with your landing page, you’ll want to build out your first website. One that can properly appeal to potential customers with more information about your features and company as well as a more refined look.

A website planning tool and sitemap creator or go-tos for building out that website architecture.

Concierge MVP

A Concierge MVP simulates a software solution where services are manually provided and users are aware of the manual process.

It’s basically the opposite of jargon and buzzwords like "optimized workflow", "streamlined process" or "fully automated".

Think of what an actual hotel concierge does, the manual tasks of making reservations, moving luggage, arranging transportation, etc. That’s what you’ll be to early users of your product.

The benefits are big time as it allows a company to directly interact with users and gather detailed feedback for improvements in the process…before the buzzwords.

By providing tailored manual services, a business can validate their product concepts and refine them based on customer feedback. This hands-on approach makes the final product much more likely to meet user needs and expectations, paving the way for future automation and scalability.

A great example of this is AngelList, the site that connects startups with investors. In their early days, the founders manually conducted registration and investor searches, making connections between startups and investors through their own network of contacts.

TheNextWeb described it like this:

"AngelList is a curated email distribution list of angel and seed stage investors. Nivi and Naval screen the companies/deals that get pushed out to this list, and they screen the investors for inclusion on the receiving end."

Co-founder Naval Ravikant summarized not just MVPs, but business in general, perfectly:

"We didn’t set out to build a product. We set out to solve a problem."

Wizard of Oz MVP

In a Wizard of Oz MVP, users interact with what seems like a functional product, where the front-end user experience is fully functional and appears automated but the backend processes are handled manually without their knowledge.

Quite similar to the Concierge approach in many ways, this type of MVP offers users a working product while allowing businesses to:

• Validate product ideas
• Gather user feedback
• Test market demand
• Iterate and improve the product without fully developing the underlying technology

By simulating a functional product, companies can test key assumptions and sharpen their offerings based on real user interactions.

Zappos, the online shoe store Amazon bought for $1.2 billion, is the most well-known example here. To test the concept, founder Nick Swinmurn put up a website and when someone placed an order, a member of his team would run out, buy the shoes and ship them.

To build a site for your own MVP, you can use our AI sitemap generator to get your site structure sorted in a few seconds.

Piecemeal MVP

The classic hodge-podge job where a startup uses existing tools, services and components to build a functional product without developing everything from scratch.

By leveraging pre-built solutions, i.e., integrations and tools like Zapier automation, your team can cost-effectively offer users a viable product, test your business idea and get useful feedback — fast.

What advantages might a Piecemeal minimum viable product give your company?

• Speed to market: By leveraging existing tools and services, you can assemble and launch a product far faster
• Cost efficiency: Using pre-built solutions and third-party services minimizes the need for extensive development resources which translates into lower upfront costs (and less capital risk!)
• Flexibility and adaptability: Creating a product with existing tools makes it easier to adjust and pivot the product based on feedback and changing market conditions
• Resource optimization: Leveraging existing tools means you can allocate limited resources more effectively and allow your team to focus on innovation and user experience

Video MVP

This one is exactly what you think it is, a minimum viable product where a company uses a video to explain, demonstrate or showcase their product idea to potential customers.

It allows entrepreneurs to validate their concepts, collect feedback and gauge interest without building a fully functional product initially.

The video is meant to clearly communicate the product’s value proposition, features and benefits effectively. Dropbox did a pitch perfect job with their MVP video, which you can find in the next section.

Real-life minimum viable product examples

Many, if not all of the companies you know and love today started as a minimum viable product and moved from successful MVPs to full-fledged juggernauts; from a minimal featureset to evolution based on validated learning to widespread adoption.

These companies provide some of the best examples:

• Airbnb
• Buffer
• Dropbox
• Spotify

Airbnb

Airbnb’s MVP journey began during a design conference in San Francisco, where hotels were fully booked.

The founders, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, smelled an opportunity and set up a basic website that allowed users to rent out airbeds in their apartment, manually managing bookings and interactions with their guests to refine the service.

The success of their simple minimum viable product allowed them to validate the market demand for short-term, affordable rentals and laid the groundwork for the global behemoth that Airbnb would become.

They’ve since expanded from the core offering to give users the ability to book experiences in the cities they’re visiting.

Fun fact: They raised $30,000 by selling cereal during the 2008 election; Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain.

Buffer

Buffer, a social media scheduling tool, started by creating a two-page MVP which was a very simple landing page outlining the concept.

Joel Gascoigne, the founder of Buffer, wrote an excellent blog that laid out exactly how they went from idea to paying customers in 7 weeks.

His initial idea was as minimum as possible:

"It was a tiny idea. I wanted to take the scheduling feature of many Twitter clients and apps and make that single feature awesome. I believed that single feature was worthy of its own application."

That two-pager allowed Joel to measure interest through email sign-ups, confirming and validating the market demand before developing the actual product.

His next step was to test pricing:

Only after he had validated learning and clear proof people were willing to pay did he build the first version of Buffer.

Fast forward 10-plus years and Buffer now handles all major social networks and has developed tools for more than just scheduling, including a content creation module, analytics and more.

Dropbox

Dropbox’s MVP journey and initial pitch was so dang good, Eric Ries (yes, The Lean Startup guy) wrote a guest post for TechCrunch praising it and Forbes put Dropbox CEO Drew Houston on their cover.

A BBC profile breaks down how the company started to gain traction:

"To attract its first customers Dropbox made promotional videos that it put up on discussion websites such as Reddit and Slashdot. The aim was to get technology sector influencers to start using the service in the hope that they would speak positively about the product, and user numbers would then grow thanks to this word of mouth.

This indeed proved successful, and from 5,000 users on a waiting list, within a few days Dropbox had 75,000 sign ups. Then it went from 100,000 users to 200,000 users "in something like 10 days"."

Their video demo showcased the essential features and ease of use of their product – which Steve Jobs famously called a feature, not a product, before launching iCloud.

This simple yet effective video MVP, packed with insider jokes that would land with the tech-savvy audience, led to seismic and almost immediate growth.

Dropbox did $2.5 billion in revenue in 2023.

As far as minimum viable product examples go, this is the gold standard for success.

Spotify

Streaming music is so commonplace and normalized now that it’s tough to remember the days before services like Spotify. The dark ages of buying physical CDs for $18 because you liked one song and prayed the rest of the album didn’t suck or simply breaking the law and pirating music.

Spotify emerged as the alternative to the Napster’s of the world and changed how we take in tunes.

Henrik Kniberg, co-founder of Sweden-based Crisp and involved in the early days of Spotify, explained their origins:

"Spotify was founded on some key assumptions – that people are happy to stream (rather than own) music, that labels and artists are willing to let people do so legally, and that fast and stable streaming is technically feasible."

As Spotify CEO Daniel Ek put it, "We spent an insane amount of time focusing on latency, when no one cared, because we were hell bent on making it feel like you had all the world’s music on your hard drive. Obsessing over small details can sometimes make all the difference. That’s what I believe is the biggest misunderstanding about the minimum viable product concept. That is the V in the MVP."

After figuring out how to close the gap between pressing play and hearing music, the team got the product into the hands of a small number of users to provide feedback and validate their ideas.

They quickly expanded out of Sweden and are of course among the most popular music streaming services out there.

From MVP to MAP: Evolving beyond minimum viable

Minimum viable products are rad, don’t get us wrong, but are they the end all, be all of product development?

As user expectations and market competition increase, the MVP approach may not be enough for a new product.

Ask yourself as a customer or user, how much quality are you willing to lose, how much time are you willing to spend and how much money are you willing to pay for a test?

When Spotify first launched, for example, streaming wasn’t ubiquitous and the competition was close to non-existent, so the MVP could really be bare minimum.

If you want to launch a streamer now, how well would that approach work?

It’s not to say that the MVP model is useless but consider that all the examples we gave above were for companies started over a decade ago.

Enter the MAP, or minimum awesome product.

What is a minimum awesome product?

A minimum awesome product is the most impressive version of a product that can be created with the available resources. While an MVP focuses on basic functionality, a MAP ensures that the product is both functional and appealing to users.

The MAP aims to deliver not just the necessary features but also:

• Excellent design
• Ease of use
• Security
• Speed

It’s like taking the minimum viable product and maxing out the UX and design as much as possible to address the ever-rising expectations of modern users. This new approach produces products that aren’t only viable but also delightful, which increases the chances of customer retention and satisfaction.

Why MAP is an evolution of MVP

Two words: evolving expectations.

Two more words: higher standards.

In this day and age, customers are just more accustomed to using highly refined products, regardless of whether they’re new or not.

They expect a minimum of quality and they expect it of all new products as a baseline.

Social networks are a good example.

If you’re building a new one, every single user is going to expect a search bar, a messaging function and an engagement method like liking or favoriting content easily.

Why?

Because that’s the pattern we’ve all learned from years of Facebooking, Instagramming, Tweeting, TikToking, etc.

So a minimum feature set doesn’t really work anymore.

Transitioning from MVP to MAP is what’ll keep you in the game. Building a product that keeps costs and investment at a minimal level but also captivates users with its quality and design.

This evolution is crucial for businesses operating in competitive markets, where standing out requires more than just basic features. By focusing on delivering an awesome product, companies can better meet user expectations and achieve long-term success.

Differences between MVP and MAP

A MAP takes you further than the basic functionality of a minimum viable product (MVP) and aims at delivering an exceptional user experience too.

One that emphasizes quality build, great design and user satisfaction.

Here’s one way to look at it:

And a detailed look at how they compare:

Benefits of focusing on user experience and design

Emphasizing user experience and design can notably enhance customer retention and satisfaction.

An MVP helps in testing user experience (UX) and usability, leading to deeper user engagement and retention.

By focusing on these aspects, a business can create products that resonate more deeply with their end user, leading to long-term success.

To get the most out of your design and UX team, use a diagram maker to plan out the most efficient and intuitive way for customers to navigate your app or site.

Elevated user experience also requires a commitment to SEO content and marketing. A website content planner helps you put together content that resonates with both potential users and search engines.

When to consider shifting from MVP to MAP

Businesses ought to contemplate transitioning from MVP to MAP when user expectations and market competitiveness necessitate superior quality and improved user experience.

In a nutshell:

If your industry has many existing products and alternatives, you need to build a more refined product to stand out.

The choice between MVP and MAP depends on the competition in the industry, a MAP is beneficial — perhaps even required — when the product needs to offer more than just basic functionalities to succeed.

A new music streamer that wants to compete with Spotify and Apple Music and get buy-in from music labels, needs to have at least the basic features of Spotify and Apple.

The concept of a minimum viable product (MVP) still holds but the bar is significantly higher for what’s viable in more mature spaces.

Modern user expectations drive the shift

The whole idea of shifting to a minimum awesome product is that user expectations have evolved dramatically over the past few decades, driven largely by the rapid pace of technological advancement.

In the video below, Ash Maurya from LEANFoundry presents a new take on the MVP approach. He suggests that traditional MVPs may fall short of modern user expectations due to rising competition and lower entry barriers. Instead, Ash emphasizes the importance of deeply understanding customer problems and creating solutions that genuinely address their needs before product development.

In the early days of the internet, users were significantly more forgiving of clunky interfaces and limited functionality. The novelty of technology was enough to keep people engaged.

Fast forward to today and users demand seamless, intuitive experiences right out of the gate. Just think of how quickly a slow loading website frustrates us today.

They expect products to not only meet their needs but to anticipate them, providing solutions before problems even arise. The smartphone era has played a big role in shaping these expectations.

With instant access to a plethora of apps that are constantly updated and improved, users have grown accustomed to high standards of performance and usability.

It’s not enough to have a uni-tasking device that puts 1,000 songs in your pocket like the iPod did, that’s now become a basic music streaming app that gives you millions of songs.

The rise of AI and machine learning has further fueled these expectations, as folks now look for personalization and smart responses in the tools they use daily.
On top of all of that, social media platforms have created a culture where feedback is immediate — and public.

A single post or review can make or break a product, pushing developers to prioritize quality and user experience from the outset.

Don’t believe it? Humane Ai Pin was savaged by Marques Brownlee, a hugely popular tech YouTuber, who called it the worst product he’s ever reviewed to his more than 19 million followers.

TechCrunch noted that he "gave a particularly damning review, which many said could single-handedly kill the Ai Pin before it had properly launched."

That dynamic landscape means that understanding current user expectations is crucial for any product development strategy.

Common minimum viable product challenges (and how to overcome them)

There are a handful of challenges that any early stage company or business is going to face when they’re starting out.

The Big Three are: scope creep, resource constraints and balancing speed with quality.

Scope creep

Scope creep is a notorious challenge in the minimum viable product (MVP) process and it happens when the project’s requirements begin to expand beyond the original plan.

There’s often a natural desire to add more features and generally try to make the product as appealing as possible, both to satisfy demands of users and stakeholders or venture capital that’s involved.

Problem is, despite good intentions, scope creep leads to delays, ballooning costs and diluted focus which could ultimately doom the MVP before it even gets off the ground.

Solution

To combat scope creep, it’s crucial to set a clear and concise MVP definition from the outset and, if possible, have a project manager who can guide the process and help stick to primary objectives and must-have features while building a prioritized backlog.

Regularly review progress and maintain strict change control processes to ensure any additions are thoroughly evaluated and justified. This disciplined approach helps to keep the project on track and focused on delivering the essential value proposition.

Resource constraints

Resource constraints are a common hurdle in the MVP process, especially for startups and small teams. Bootstrapping a product, idea or company into existence is not for the faint of heart.

Limited budgets, people and time can (and often do) restrict the entire development process.

On the flipside, a whole lot of creativity can be (and is) conjured in those highly restrictive early days. Necessity is the mother of invention and these constraints necessitate careful planning and strategic allocation of resources to maximize efficiency and impact.

Solution

Perhaps the most effective strategy is to adopt lean methodologies and agile project management, which emphasize creating maximum value with minimal resources.

Prioritize features that provide the most significant user benefits and consider outsourcing non-core activities to specialized freelancers or agencies.

Additionally, leveraging open-source tools and platforms can reduce costs and speed up development.

Regularly reassess resource allocation and remain flexible to adapt to changing circumstances, ensuring that the team remains focused and productive despite limitations.

Balancing speed and quality

Balancing the need for rapid development with maintaining high quality is no simple task.

The pressure to launch quickly can naturally lead to cutting corners, resulting in a product that fails to meet user expectations or is riddled with bugs.

Conversely, overemphasizing quality can delay the launch altogether, causing missed market opportunities and increased costs.

Solution

Iterative development is the name of the game, start with a simple idea and build on it with your team.

Make the build-measure-learn cycle your best friend and always remember that you can add on in the next iteration.

Release smaller, functional increments of the product and gather customer feedback to guide the next iteration.

Implement rigorous testing protocols to identify and fix critical issues early, while allowing minor imperfections to be addressed in later iterations.

Focus on continuous improvement with your team rather than aiming for perfection in every iteration (it won’t happen anyhow, don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good!).

This approach ensures a timely release while maintaining a focus on delivering a reliable and valuable user experience.

Watch out for these issues

Writing in Harvard Business Review, Joan Schneider and Julie Hall, partners in a firm that specializes in product launches, pinpointed 5 flaws that can sink your ship:

• Flaw 1: The company can’t support fast growth.
• Flaw 2: The product falls short of claims and gets bashed.
• Flaw 3: The new item exists in "product limbo."
• Flaw 4: The product defines a new category and requires substantial consumer education—but doesn’t get it.
• Flaw 5: The product is revolutionary, but there’s no market for it.

These are in addition to the cardinal sin of a lack of preparation. As they note, "Companies are so focused on designing and manufacturing new products that they postpone the hard work of getting ready to market them until too late in the game".

Techniques for prioritizing features and templates for building an MVP

Your product can’t and shouldn’t stay minimally viable forever. Question is, how can you reliably know which features to add as you build a new product?

Several tools and techniques can help with this process, including the MoSCoW Matrix, Effort and Impact Analysis and the Kano Model.

Each provides a different perspective on feature prioritization, helping your business make informed development decisions and achieve the maximum amount of benefits possible for your customers.

MoSCoW Matrix

The MoSCoW Matrix classifies features into:

• Must-haves: non-negotiable and essential for the product to function
• Should-haves: important but not vital and can be deferred if necessary
• Could-haves: nice to have but not necessary for the product to function
• Will-not-haves: features that will not be included in the product

Key features, or must-haves, are essential for the product’s success and form the minimum feature set.

Could-have features, on the other hand, are desirable but less critical and often the first to be prioritized — but will rank highly on your prioritization list for future sprints.

Why include will-not-have features though?

They help you set clear boundaries for what’s excluded in the current timeframe, keeping you focused on what matters most.

And yes, the o’s don’t mean anything, but it sure is easier to remember Moscow than MSCW.

Impact Effort Matrix

An Effort and Impact Matrix allows you and your team to prioritize based on the highest-impact/lowest-effort features and tasks for the minimum viable product.

These categories make up the matrix:

• Quick/easy wins
• Tasks that are easy to implement and deliver significant benefits; these should be prioritized and executed first.
• Major projects/big bets
• Tasks that can bring substantial benefits but require considerable resources or time; these should be planned and managed carefully.
• Fill-ins
• Tasks that are easy to do but have minimal impact; these can be done when there’s extra time or resources.
• Reconsider/thankless tasks/money pits
• Tasks that require a lot of effort but deliver minimal benefits; these should be avoided or deprioritized.

By visually categorizing features and/or tasks into quadrants, your team can prioritize tasks efficiently, ensuring that the most valuable features are developed first.

Kano Model

The Kano Model, developed by Professor Noriaki Kano in the 1980s, is a framework that helps prioritize product features based on their impact on customer satisfaction.

It’s broken down into five main feature types:

1. Must-haves (aka must-bes, threshold features or basic needs): These are the fundamental key features that customers expect from a product on day 1. If these needs aren’t met, users will be dissatisfied. Crucially, meeting these needs does not necessarily increase user satisfaction; it just prevents dissatisfaction. For example, in a music app, a threshold feature could be the search function.
2. Performance needs (aka one-dimensional needs): These features directly influence user satisfaction—the better they’re executed, the happier users will be. Conversely, poor implementation leads to dissatisfied customers. These features are often related to the product’s functionality and efficiency. Streaming speed and audio quality options would be performance needs in a music app.
3. Excitement needs (aka delighters): These are the unexpected features that can significantly boost user satisfaction and delight. Users don’t anticipate these features, so their absence does not cause dissatisfaction. When present though they can create a "wow" moment. An example of a delighter in our music example might be an AI-powered music discovery tool.
4. Indifferent features : Indifferent features are elements of a product that, whether present or absent, have no significant impact on user satisfaction. Users neither appreciate nor dislike these features; they are essentially neutral. In a music app that would be a feature like color themes or skins.
5. Reverse features (aka undesired): Reverse features are quite the opposite; these are elements that some users might actively dislike and could even lead to dissatisfaction or polarization if included. Avoid building these altogether! Forcing social media integration or song previews before accessing a playlist could be features that are undesirable.

It’s great to have those categories, how do you actually get each feature of a new product categorized into them.

Ask users two closed-end questions about each feature:

• If you have [feature description], how do you feel?
• If you don’t have [feature description], how do you feel?

Provide five answer that cover the negative-positive spectrum, like:

• I like it
• I expect it
• I am neutral
• I can tolerate it
• I dislike it

Then chart the answers:

For more details, check out Microsoft’s breakdown.

Ultimately, by using the Kano model, a business can be confident that their minimum viable product includes features that maximize user satisfaction and market success.

Templates for building a minimum viable product

The features you prioritize are a key part of bringing your idea to life but that’s not all that goes into an MVP.

If you’re building an app, how are customers getting onboarded?

What’s their user journey?

If you’re creating a whole site rather than a landing page, how will it be structured?

Lots to consider so we rounded up our most useful templates to take you and your team from idea to minimum viable product.

Onboarding process process flow chart template

Product features mind map template

Product testing process template

SaaS website structure template

User journey map template

Kanban board template

User story template

User flow template

Summary

Developing a minimum viable product (MVP) is a strategic approach that allows a business to test their ideas, gather valuable user feedback and validate assumptions with minimal risk.

The name of the game is continuous learning, iteration and refinement.

By focusing on must-have features, your team can save time and resources while ensuring that the product meets market needs. Transitioning from an MVP to a minimum awesome product (MAP) can further improve user experience and satisfaction, and is all but required in mature industries as a way to help your business stand out in competitive markets.

Embrace the MVP approach and become an MVP.

Frequently Asked Questions