A minimum viable product (MVP) is a prototype of a product that has just enough features to allow early adopters to use it and give feedback on how to improve it in the future. An MVP can help you test your product idea, validate your assumptions, learn from your customers, and avoid wasting time and money on features that they don’t want or need. But how do you select the features to include and exclude from your MVP? How should features for your MVP be prioritized? In this article, we’ll explore How to Determine Which Features are Important for Your Minimum Viable Product.
Step 1: Define your product vision and goals
The first step to prioritizing features for your MVP is to define your product vision and goals. Your product vision is a clear and concise statement describing your product, who it is for, what problem it solves, and how it differs from other products. Your product goals are specific and measurable outcomes that you want to achieve with your product, such as increasing revenue, acquiring customers, reducing churn, or improving satisfaction. Defining your product vision and goals will help you align your team, communicate your value proposition and guide your feature decisions.
Step 2: Identify your target customers and their needs
The second step to prioritize features for your MVP is to identify your target customers and their needs. Your target market is made up of the niches that you want to serve with your product. Your customer needs are the problems, pains, or desires that they have and that your product can address. Identifying your target customers and their needs will help you understand who you are building for, what they want, and why they want it.
Step 3: Generate and validate feature ideas
Then, the third step to prioritize features for your MVP is to generate and validate feature ideas. Feature ideas are possible solutions that can meet your customer needs and help you achieve your product goals. You can generate feature ideas by brainstorming, researching, interviewing, surveying, or observing your target customers. You can validate feature ideas by testing them with real or potential customers using methods such as prototypes, mockups, landing pages, or experiments. Generating and validating feature ideas will help you discover what works and what doesn’t work for your customers.
Step 4: Evaluate and prioritize feature ideas
The fourth step to prioritizing features for your MVP is to evaluate and prioritize feature ideas. Evaluation checks how good and doable each feature idea is based on customer, business, technical, and vision criteria. Prioritization is the process of ranking the feature ideas based on their relative importance and urgency. You can evaluate and prioritize feature ideas using tools such as scorecards, matrices, roadmaps, or frameworks. Evaluating and prioritizing feature ideas will help you decide what to build first and what to build later.
Step 5: Build and launch your MVP
The fifth and last step to prioritize features for your MVP is to build and launch your MVP. Building is the process of developing the selected feature ideas into a functional product that can be used by customers. After that, launching is the process of releasing the product to the market and making it available to customers. You can build and launch your MVP using agile methods such as Scrum or Kanban that allow you to deliver value quickly and iteratively. Building and launching your MVP will help you get feedback from customers and learn from their behavior.
Conclusion
Product managers or entrepreneurs who want to create a great product must prioritize features for their MVP. You can create a product that serves your customers and meets your product goals by following steps that involve creating your product vision and goals, learning about your target customers and their needs, building and validating feature ideas, judging and ordering feature ideas, and developing and launching your MVP.
