A useful tactic in contemporary development, deploying a minimal viable product (MVP) lets you spin up fast and secure the clients you need to drive innovation and progress. However, it can be difficult to define what a MVP is and what you should know before forging ahead with your coding and outreach.

So, what exactly is a MVP and what should you consider when it comes to expenses and resource expenditure?

What is a minimum viable product?

A core concept in lean development practice, a MVP is a software platform or product that is released with the bare minimum of elements required to make it usable. This allows teams to quickly move to market with a concept, secure their niche, and attract key clients who work with your team to provide feedback and potentially help shape the platform.

As time goes on, features and value-adds are steadily implemented – letting you take a ‘live’ approach to understanding your place in relation to your competitors. The core goal of launching your MVP is to collate the most information from your audience base as possible while expending the minimum effort – often deploying an approach that allows you to co-create value and make your audience feel that they are on the ‘ground floor’ for your platform and that their opinions and thoughts are valued and will be taken on board.

What are the benefits?

Deploying an MVP carries a number of significant benefits, including:

Validated Understanding: Working with a live audience will allow you to quickly secure first-hand feedback from clients and customers. This can help feed use cases back to testers and developers, allowing you to make practical challenges to the platform that actually work.

Optimised Development: No matter the size of your team, you will want your coders to be working on elements that need to be addressed, add long-term value, and address specific client issues. Producing an MVP allows your employees or creators to take a focused look at your system’s growth strategy and always take an optimised approach to development.

Agile Approach: Coming to market with an MVP is a core tenet of agile development methodologies as it allows you to respond to client demands with ease and take advantage of reactive development practice. This can help ensure responsiveness, nimble daily practice, and reduced overheads at the end of the day.

How much do they cost?

While it can be difficult to predict your expenses when it comes to software development, this can become a particularly pronounced risk when it comes to MVP’s. System elements can be costly to add and require an element of ‘ad-hoc’ planning, which can be difficult when it comes to an increasingly complex process.

Partnering with a reliable development house or provider can help keep your MVP costs down and ensure that your project stays within bounds and is able to scale effectively. Despite being fundamentally experimental, choosing the right provider can help you stay on track and plan your strategy appropriately.