MVP development

While launching a new app, the product development time is one of the most prioritized factors, which clients focus on. At times, this is placed even ahead of the project budget. Of course, companies can enjoy a competitive advantage, as they can tap their market before their competitors do. It is for this reason that a fast MVP (Minimum Viable Product) serves as an effective strategy for several companies. They implement these to test the requirements of their customers. Why is an MVP Necessary? An MVP can be defined as a simpler version of your software that can solve your problem. The software development time needs to be as short as possible. Companies waiting long to develop these products are susceptible to high competition. In the process, they may lose the strategic edge in the industry. However, with a working version of the software, startups can approach their investors. They can also be an early entrant in the industry. Validating a business idea becomes easier, when you have an MVP. A statistic reveals that 70% of tech startups fail to thrive, normally around 20 months after they receive the first financing, primarily due to poor market research. However, when you run a test using an MVP, the difference can be huge. It can prevent business failures, as you can obtain feedback and check out the needs of your customers. An MVP serves as a tool to realize the true potential of a given idea. Accordingly, you can plan the right direction of steering your business. Another core benefit of using an MVP is that, brands can promote their products earlier. In the process, they can reach out to the early adopters much faster. When you get an idea of the preferences of your users, you can incorporate the changes, while developing the product on full-scale. Besides, a tangible outcome of your product can help you attract investors. Most importantly, business firms need not invest resources in features that do not appeal to users. Evidently, an MVP can complement your marketing strategy right from scratch. Hybrid Apps and Flutter: A Brief Background Xamarin, a company which is presently owned by Microsoft, emerged in 2011 to foster better hybrid app development. This brought about a revolution in the development of hybrid apps. The idea was to simplify the coding and use the same code for developing apps on both platforms. Next, Ionic gained popularity in 2013, and Drift Co. was behind this development. The developers could come up with sophisticated apps, using their existing abilities. React.js was used by Facebook in 2015 for mobile app development. This was the beginning of React Native, a relatively new code base for JavaScript. Other hybrid frameworks were also present in the market, which the developers bypassed to carry out developments natively on Java. In December 2018, Flutter 1.0 was released by Google. Over 18 months, Google had the software in beta. The Dart programming language was used in this tool. Dart, developed by Google, is similar to C. As an OOP programming language, it was easy to be used by developers who knew Java or C. They could seamlessly adapt to the language. Besides, ECMA has approved Dart as a programming language and it is not a mobile only language. The developers can use Dart to develop anything on the servers, web, desktop and mobile apps. After this, mobile app developers have been extensively using Flutter to enjoy a seamless app development process. Why Should Businesses Adopt an MVP? In order to validate your business idea, an MVP needs to be developed. It confirms the interest of the users in the products you are planning to launch. Using an MVP can minimize possible errors by testing the product on a small scale, or creating a hypothesis. MVP deals with balancing the offerings of your business to the users with that they actually need. Business firms adopting MVPs can benefit in several ways. They can remain within a limited budget, while launching their apps quickly Save time while developing the app, finding the right target group Gather feedback about a given app, further improvising the product Save resources, money and time, ensuring that they channelize their efforts to develop a product that will probably be successful Find early adopters of the product by acquiring a potential base of customers For business firms, it is advisable to start with limited features in the basic model. Successful companies often follow this strategy. Companies That Have Successfully Implemented MVPs It is interesting to study how successful companies got started with an MVP. Many of the successful brands like Uber, Instagram and Buffer experimented with MVPs. Buffer Buffer is a popular social media account scheduling and management software. It was started as a two page site with minimal features. The developers adopted the lean methodology, presenting the idea to examine whether or not his product would appeal to the people. Eventually, the Buffer team came up with a web app, which supported only Twitter, integrated with a Chrome extension feature. Dropbox You must be familiar with Dropbox, the popular cloud storage platform. In the early days, the company encountered financial challenges. They required money to do away with technological problems, before the MVP could be launched. The investors, too, found it difficult to get a clear idea of their pitch, since they were not trying out any solution. Besides, the concept was very innovative and it lied beyond their imagination. Therefore, a video MVP was created by Dree Huston, explaining the idea behind Dropbox. Uber Transportation mechanisms within and even between cities have evolved, thanks to app cabs. Before the inception of Uber, people had to wait for a long time to avail a cab. People can now call cabs through their smartphones. The MVP developed for Uber was designed to test whether it was viable to develop an on-call taxi service without a call centre. The developers used GPS in sharing the locations of taxi drivers, while connecting