MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is one of the most important terms when it comes to Mobile App Development. You know we’ve already covered the topic of benefits of creating an MVP first here in this blog post- Benefits of creating Mobile app MVP first, we now thought to go one step further and discuss how to prioritize the features for an MVP out of the slew of tempting features you’ve in your vision-bucket.. As app development is being practiced widely across the globe, its very important to be clear with all the parameters that play a role in this business. Being into this business since almost a decade, I can surely share the aspects that have been useful for creating and launching an app. Before going into this, let me first give a clear definition of MVP.
The definition of MVP
MVP (Minimum Viable Product), as can be predicted a bit by the name, it is the pre-nurtured form of the final app (as you visualize) that is to be launched. In other terms, it is the trial version of the finalized app that can be used for validation of any app and its features in the market. It is used as a risk-assumption so that you can get the real stats of your product among the users and thus can escape major losses.
The major Question
To identify which features to implement in an MVP so that we can launch it quickly, and most important which “tempting” features to leave.
Product strategy- Can it be missed?
The first and foremost thing is the product strategy that you can’t afford to miss.As the above image clearly showcases the various points for product strategy, I would go into more details further in this article. This starts with discovering what will be the plans? What all will MVP for the product accomplish? Aspects of these factors included, why it should be included and what impact it will have on the target audience? Keeping all these in mind, you should devote as much time as you could in going through every bit of your product and features. To get a successful strategy, some points are to be kept in mind like- the target audience, the best reason why you chose this product idea, reach-ability, the complete development process, estimated time taken, these being the most important ones. To achieve it, set an accurate goal that can be aimed at and turn all stones to achieve it.
Since MVP is the first shot for your app, it should leave an everlasting effect all around. We have many set examples for the success achieved through MVP. The first one I would talk about is Uber. It is a taxi booking app which was first first launched only in San Francisco with very limited features, but now with every passing year it is achieving a new milestone with hundreds of new features spreading globally.
I guess now I have made it a bit clear why it is important to prioritize features for your mobile app MVP and what difference it can make.
Competition to competitors – Why should we choose you?
This is the first question that every user, including me, have in mind before going for any product.Therefore, the second most important thing is what makes you stand apart from other such apps so that the public get attracted and choose you out of all other options. The MVP is for trial so you can implement any idea you have in your mind and check the results.
The wonder wishlist – The wants and needs
One very important point here is to point down all the ideas you get to into your wishlist. The second step here would be analyzing all the aspects of these features and then you’ll prioritize them based on your analysis. It is an important step just to ensure that you gather all your ideas to have a look at without any miss.
The features to be considered
Before getting down to prioritization, let me first discuss few of the common features. But the most important point to be taken care of is that for an MVP,instead of messing up with a bunch of features, cut them short to the most significant ones that can truly bring your app into the market and hit a great shot. If we talk about the list of common features they can be – customer reviews panel, device adoption, geographies, languages availability, churn density etc. There can be thousands of features including on your app and customizations.
How to prioritize features for your mobile App MVP?
There are N number of methods to understand prioritization of features which you can get to know online. But where you’ll get stuck is which one to choose for your easy understanding and better results. For better understanding, let me just discuss some famous methods for prioritization of features for an app MVP. After creating the list, you need to analyze and visualize the importance of each point in order to set them on the priority scale. To ease up your task, lets move on to the different techniques used-
1. MoSCoW Method to prioritize features for your mobile App MVP
To start with, let me just elaborate this strange term that stands for – Must have, Should have, Could have, Won’t have. Through this technique, you can segregate all those features listed in your wonder list into these 4 categories.
To have clear idea of the categories and topics, just have a look on the image which explains all the categories clearly. It makes it very easy after you categorize your features according to your priority. This is the most famous methods of prioritization used for an MVP but still there are various other methods and also more points which I’ll be discussing later in this article.
2. Kano Method to prioritize features for your mobile App MVP
Another important method which is Japanese by origin is Kano method. It showcases various stages with the help of a graphical representation. It gives a qualitative analysis for different attributes like one-dimensional quality, must-be quality, indifferent quality, attractive quality and reverse quality. Through this method a graph is plotted which shows how these attributes changes over time.
This graph shows changes that takes place with time in terms of factors like customer satisfaction and performance level recorded. Hence, Kano method is very useful to monitor the changes that occur with time.
So these were 2 most useful methods for prioritization of features which is used mostly. With these methods you can easily keep a track of all the features before and after including them in your MVP. They can also be marked over the prioritization matrix where it would be easy to understand the importance and impact of each idea and features.
Before I sum it all up, let me discuss few more points that help you to prioritize features for your mobile App MVP as follows –
1.What exactly is the present demand and needs of the customers?
The customers are the gold treasures and the most important part for any successful product launch. So, before prioritizing the features for your app MVP, just keep in mind what the users most want at the moment and what are their needs, as there lies a considerable line of difference between needs and wants. What they need is the primary necessity and what they want is what can be thought over and included. So play smart!
2.The customer review panel is a must have in any app MVP.
Already stated the importance of customers. So, I think this point is pretty clear that audience should be given a point where they can share their experiences for any updates or changes that can be done.
3. When does any feature have the best possible outcome?
After prioritization of features, the other factor that is important is time of adding it to your product. You should figure out what is to be added at the very beginning and what gradually or when you gather a certain amount of customers. Time always matters, everywhere.
4.Then comes the Product Roadmap post-MVP.
After following all and launching the MVP, you can follow the roadmap for repetitive success or analyse the results for any changes that can be made. Roadmap is the key to iterative success which is based on Key Performance Indicators(KPI) of the product.
5. Keep an eye on the competition.
This business is all about a race amongst your competitors. So to win it at the first place, you should always be bothered about what your competitors are upto so that you can find some way to beat them.
Conclusion
To conclude, I’d suggest to go easier in the beginning while doing the prioritization of the features for your mobile App MVP. You should start by first looking at the competition (to nail down what is already there in the market) and then the gap area (which is not there in the market) and take help of the MoSCoW method as the next step and since its just an MVP then over contemplating may also become counter productive. The whole idea is to launch a product quickly, so we shouldn’t spend much time in fianlizing what is to be launched, either.
I hope this posts assists you in the process of prioritizing the features for an MVP. If you feel we missed any important point, or have follow up questions then lets discuss it in the comment section below or you can write us back to [email protected]. We would be glad to hear back your inputs on the topic.
Stay tuned with our blog for more such topics in the future.
