Business
10 Reasons Why Your MVP May Fail
Many times we have heard or been told that for app development or web development, we can focus the project on developing an MVP. But what is it?
Minimum Viable Product
The MVP or Minimum Viable Product is that approach that allows the development of what is essential in a project, in this case, we are commenting on, in-app or web development. That is, focus on not developing a project or product to the last consequences, but following the strategy of investing as little time as possible to achieve something that works, perhaps not as we expect in its full form, but it does allow us to capture the essence and go to the market or in a test group, with something probable.
This has many advantages, the main one perhaps is that we do not burn the project budget cartridge in an unvalidated hypothesis. Many times, many projects or startups focus on translating the idea of their founders down to the last details and then going to market. This entails delaying time-to-market and also leaves you with no room for manoeuvre if, in the end, your hypothesis is not aligned with the market and you have to make certain adjustments to the scope of the project. There is no money left for that and many companies or startups suffer or end up closing, even being close to what users need.
Anyway, there are some reasons why your MVP may fail.
The 10 reasons why your MVP may fail:
1 – Wrong approach from the beginning
MVP is not specifically aimed at small projects with low funds. Unfortunately, most people draw this wrong conclusion from the start thus treating MVP development carelessly.
2 – Oversize the MVP
One of the most common mistakes in the MVP definition process is that you end up with a new oversized product. This usually happens if the person defining the MVP is the same person who came up with the new product. In this case, it is advisable that someone outside the creative process take the role of the buyer (or user) to isolate the necessary functionalities of the MVP. Normally it is very difficult for the person who has devised the new product to renounce a functionality to create a first reduced version of it.
3 – Not taking into account the capabilities of the team
In defining the minimum viable product, we must bear in mind the capabilities of the equipment that we have. To create a new product, often innovative, it is necessary to use certain technologies and tailor-made developments will have to be made. The success or failure in the creation of the MVP will be linked to having the knowledge and skills to be able to carry it out. In a startup, it is good that the definition of the MVP involves the entire team or a representation of the different profiles available. From collective work, it is easier for a realistic MVP to appear to the capabilities of the team. Otherwise, it is easy to make mistakes that will jeopardize the success of the project.
4 – Thinking that the MVP is the cheap version of the product
Another very common mistake is thinking that the MVP is just the cheap or lite version of the product. The MVP does not refer to the versions or payment methods of the product. It is about the definition of minimum functionalities so that the product can be used for its potential clients.
5 – Include non-differential elements in MVP
Every time someone explains to you that they are working on a minimal viable product and in its definition include superfluous elements such as chats, advanced messaging systems, labels, filters, certain social functionalities … Your answer, unequivocally, must be that this is not the minimum viable product. At this point, it is easy to get into endless discussions about how necessary one functionality or another is.
6 – Relate the word viable with profitability
The word viable does not refer to the economic viability of the project or its profitability. The MVP is not the product with which we will start to earn money, but it will allow us to measure whether our idea is viable or not. Ultimately, the MVP helps us to evaluate if there are people willing to use our application or to pay for the use of our platform. Joining profitability to the creation of the MVP is very risky, it will not allow us to iterate from the feedback received from users or clients and will put a lot of pressure on the team.
7 – Do not include time in the approach
For a startup, when creating a new product, time is a very important variable. Poor time management can make a product fail or even bankrupt a startup. Time, even if it is infinite globally, is limited for a startup. It is limited by the funding available and in many cases requires your product to work and be profitable before the money runs out. For this, it is very important for the health of the startup not to link the creation of the MVP to its profitability.
8 – Do not write user stories
User stories play a very important role in defining the MVP. To write them we must answer the questions: Who wants it? What do you want it for? What is the benefit? They are also linked to validation criteria. The MVP must output the essential user stories to validate the product with potential customers.
9 – Make mistakes invalidating
There are many reasons why validation doesn’t work as it should but the main reason behind it is a false hypothesis. Many mistakes in the development of MVP lead to errors in making hypotheses based on something that is not real.
10 – Too much and too little
And finally, the final mistake is applying too few features to the MVP or overcrowding them.
Conclusion:
Creating and developing an MVP may seem like a complicated project but starting any business project carries a number of risks. Therefore, the approach that we recommend is to always try to go step by step. In a graphic way, we always explain that if you want to travel from one city to another, it would be great to do it in a high-end car but to build it, it will take a long time, between the design, building the material, assembling, etc.
Maybe you better start designing a bicycle, which is much simpler, and you can go to that city. In the next iteration, you can turn your bike into perhaps an electric one and then have a motorcycle. In the next step, you can go from a motorcycle to a utility car, to end up with that high-end car you are looking for.
You may lose some time and end up discarding some parts along the way, but it allows you to validate step by step what your users want in-app or web development, but you are not going to die trying to build that high-end car, because maybe your users don’t want that.
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