This Checklist will adeptly guide you through the process of creating a Minimum Viable Product for your idea. Regardless of whether you’re in the early stages of the process, you can use this to double-check your progress and fill in any gaps you find. It is normal if your MVP journey necessitates taking specific steps in a different order

1. Establish the Business Need

• Determine the market gap and the problem that the product solves.
• Explain why you’re creating this product.
• Determine the success criteria for evaluating product performance.

2. Ensure Team Collaboration

• Determine the development model, preferably Agile.
• Affirm team members’ roles and expectations.
• Clarify the performance indicators for the members.

3. Market Research

• Determine the competition, both existing and potential.
• Examine the competition’s workflow, strengths, weaknesses, and marketing strategies.
• Plan a strategy to set yourself apart.

4. Target Users

• Determine who your product’s users are.
• Create user personas using templates.
• Assure team empathy for user goals, needs, behaviors, etc.

5. Value Addition

• Make “user journeys” to document the user’s steps to complete various tasks.
• Determine the success criteria for these tasks.
• Explain “user stories” by listing their actions and experiences in understandable language

6. Product Backlog

• Create a single reference for all User Journeys and Tasks.
• Add new suggestions/ideas to the list.
• Update the lists in response to customer feedback and competitive analysis.
• Create a supporting documented product vision that includes short and long-term goals.

7. MVP Features

• Prioritize the tasks on the list to build MVP features.
• Determine the bare minimum of critical tasks required for the product to add value.
• Make a list of the user journeys and user stories that describe those critical tasks.
• Ensure you haven’t added any “would be nice to have” tasks to the list.

8. Identify a Development Team

• Choose an experienced team.
• Ascertain that they employ mature, industry-standard processes.
• Assess that they use agile development methodology, preferably in conjunction with DevOps.
• Affirm their knowledge of the necessary technologies.
• To ensure continuity, create a flexible structure with a solid management system.

9. Decide the Tech Stack

• Reach an agreement on the technology stack with the development team.
• Ascertain that the chosen tech stack provides a dependable and cost-effective path to producing the MVP and final product.

10. Confirm the Budget

• Budget for the build and post-launch activities.
• Ensure that the development team signs off on the funds allotted.

11. Validate the Information Architecture (IA)

• Before beginning work, validate your MVP’s IA.
• Ensure that the MVP’s IA includes all selected user stories/journeys.
• Confirm that the architecture is scalable without requiring excessive rework.

12. Utilize Wireframes & Prototypes to Plan

• Wireframes help to structure your user stories and journeys.
• Prototypes enable you to connect them for validation and iterative improvement of critical user journeys using personas and real people.
• Confirm that the interface is consistent, predictable, and accessible (usable by people with varying abilities).

13. Establish the Branding/ Style Guidelines

• Develop a distinct visual identity for your product.
• Make sure that the design team adheres to the branding and style guidelines.
• Integrate the MVP development with the stated branding and style guidelines.

14. Check the Compliance/Security of the Minimum Viable Product

• Determine the compliance requirements.
• Create a product security framework.
• Collaborate with the relevant development team to ensure that the MVP architecture incorporates compliance and security from the start.

15. Stay Involved During Development

• Make sure that the development team provides regular progress reports.
• At each stage of product development, hold discussions and reorientation meetings.

16. Launching Your MVP

• Select your audience or make it available to all.
• Invite/alert your MVP’s early adopters to begin using it.

17. Identifying & Tracking the Product Performance Metrics

• Determine and list relevant metrics for evaluating the MVP [traffic, engagement, active user count, Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC), churn rate, customer satisfaction levels, and so on].
• Keep track of these metrics and keep an eye on them.

18. Taking User Feedback

• Consider collecting customer feedback at the end of critical user journeys.
• Make it simple for customers to provide feedback.
• Compile data into informative reports for further action.

19. Implementing Learning & Test

• Enumerate your Minimum Viable Product in response to user feedback and metrics insights.
• Experiment with the changes to see how they affect the metrics and user feedback.

Final Words

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