First things first: start with an MVP – Thorgate – Medium

Every now and then we meet a client that has an awesome, world-changing idea and the drive to execute it. They have found a problem and know the solution to it. It’s truly amazing to see and feel the passion of these people: they just pull you with them and make you a believer too, writes Oliver Loit from Thorgate in his blogpost.

“When can you start developing?” or “How soon will the product be ready?” are the first questions Thorgate, as a digital product agency, gets. Although massively energised by the client’s positive attitude and amazing idea, Thorgate has to step back and look at the process objectively. How well thought through is the idea? Is there a market for it? Have they done any testing?

If the answer is no, then we suggest making a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). If you google it, then you’ll find various explanations for an MVP but in short, it’s a low-cost version (minimum) of the product but still useful and interesting (viable) for the end user.

At Thorgate, we like to use the Pareto principle when describing the MVP — it is a product consisting of 20% of the features which give 80% of the required feedback or user satisfaction. Sounds like a reasonable strategy, right?

There’s no point in going all in before you have some tangible data and proof to justify your idea. That would be like marrying your beloved right after meeting them. It’s probably smarter to date, start living together and then see how good’s the fit.

There’s one main reasons we tell our clients to make an MVP first: it’s all about testing the idea while keeping the expenses as low as possible.Usually everyone has limited budget to invest in designing and developing the product.

Let’s imagine that fully creating product X takes twelve months.You could invest all your money in creating the product but the most probable outcome is that you’d be sitting alone with your new baby while having no money to show it to the world. The smarter way to go would be to make an MVP in six months and start collecting market feedback with the help of marketing and other tools with the remaining budget. After you have proven that the idea has traction with the target market you can go all in.

If you’re not ready to go all in just yet you should take a look at our MVP Workshop program. Let us help you test your business hypothesis.

In conclusion it’s always smarter to make an MVP first before you marry your idea! Thank you for reading and if you’d like to know more about how Thorgate does the MVP scoping process then here’s an article that we wrote about it. Also again if your interested in having your own MVP workshop then feel free to use Thorgate’s know-how.

(Source: Thorgate blog)