Creating a product and bringing it to market is the true test of an entrepreneur or business leader. Successful businesses that aren’t able to rapidly create, test, and implement products that provide real value to their customers are doomed to fail. In over 25 years of business strategy and innovation consulting, I’ve seen organizations of every shape and size struggle to develop products and services that resonate with customers.
So how can entrepreneurs and business leaders develop products or services and test them quickly to ensure they are relevant and add value. The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Template is a great tool to outline the essential elements of any product or service to determine everything needed to engage and serve your target audience.
What is a Minimum Viable Product, and what are best practices, tools and online templates for teams and organizations?
The Minimum Viable Product, also known as an MVP, is integral to any successful new service or product launch. An MVP is any early product that meets certain minimum standards to be able to be shared with customers and other stakeholders for the purpose of collecting feedback and testing assumptions. This feedback can then be used to develop new features and solutions to better serve customers.
The MVP Template helps an entrepreneur or business leader outline the minimum point where the product has features that a customer would actually be willing to pay for. Seeing individuals interact with an actual product offers more insight than simply asking what customers would do with the product if it existed.
Before launching an MVP, three steps must be taken.
- Identify the Problem: Determine what problems the product should solve for customers.
- Develop a Plan of Action: Translate the Minimum Viable Product’s functionality into a plan of action.
- Align Your Objectives: Ensure the product aligns with the organization’s objectives.
The MVP tool is most often used to support product development and strategic planning. Here’s a freely available template download based on best practices from Praxie.com.
About the Author:
Soren Kaplan is the bestselling and award winning author of Leapfrogging and The Invisible Advantage, an Affiliate at the Center for Effective Organizations at USC’s Marshall School of Business, a columnist for Inc. Magazine, a globally recognized keynote speaker, and the Founder of Praxie. Business Insider and the Thinkers50 have named him one of the world’s top management thought leaders and consultants.
