Basic principles of MVP mobile application: How to prioritize features
MVP is not necessarily the most valuable player, as sports fans think. When it comes to IT products, it is simply an abbreviation meaning Minimum Viable Product. This is a common but important term in the lexicon of mobile app development.
Prioritizing MVP mobile app features
In the rush of creating a mobile app idea, you may compile a long list of desired features that may not actually be necessary for your app. Building an MVP helps understand how target users respond to your app's purpose and reveals whether the app's goal is relevant.
Having understood the importance of MVP, we will look at how to create a prioritized list of features according to your tasks and goals.
First, define the product vision and strategic goals
Whether you are a founder, product manager, CEO, or CTO, the first item is your business goal as an organization. Your aim is to understand how to combine efforts and plans to achieve the project vision and strategic goals. This implies defining the target user audience and the app's market value.
The essence of vision and goals is the practical implementation of your product strategy into tangible results. Focus on your customers' wants and needs. Regardless of the market type – B2C, B2B, or B2G – ensure all your business goals are interconnected.
Differentiate between immediate and future goals to coordinate design. Mark and separate features that must be in the initial release from those that will be added over time.
How to prioritize features for mobile app MVP
The question to resolve lies between the long list of your app's capabilities and the reality of what your MVP should do. You need to consider whether the listed features will actually drive usage of your app.
The solution you develop should align with your value proposition, plan, or technical specification. You should focus on creating a minimal version of the product that validates your mobile app concept with the least risk.
Typically, more necessary features emerge during the project. If you cannot accurately determine which features are "must-haves, should-haves, could-haves, and won't-haves" (MoSCoW), it can negatively impact the product.
The initial prioritized features should only include those that help your app achieve market value through user demand.
Distinguish between user wants and needs
Draw a clear line between what users want and what they need. Discuss the importance of each listed feature with the team and balance between 'must-have' and 'nice-to-have' features.
Consider the ratio of feature value to user base
The value of some features can only be assessed with a large and significant user base. Such features do not necessarily need to be implemented from the start. Instead, when the time comes, they can be added back to the product roadmap for future iterations.
Explore third-party services
When selecting features, consider how much time they will take to implement. For example, you want users to send messages to each other. Don't build a chat service from scratch. That would waste time and resources.
There are many third-party chat services for iOS and Android that take very little time to integrate. Allocate time for research to identify third-party services beneficial for the app.
Use metrics to build a roadmap
Professionalism requires defining key performance indicators as early as possible. This helps determine which areas to focus on for improving future versions of the app.
A dependent factor is the nature of your app. The production stage, business type, and product type determine the choice of key KPIs. The MVP will indicate which KPIs matter.
When selecting customer success metrics, a business approach is necessary. Here are some of them:
- Customer satisfaction
- Increase in lifetime value
- Adoption rate
- Retention metrics
- Churn rate
- Daily/monthly active users
- User growth
- Acquisition cost
- Average revenue per user
- Return on investment
Monitoring the success metrics mentioned above and then reconciling them with business plans and product roadmap goals will help understand how users interact with your product from the MVP stage.
Monitor functional customer feedback channels
It's necessary to provide a way to get feedback from users. This is technically mandatory for a mobile app MVP. The reason is that such feedback helps the product development team make data-driven decisions at every level of development. Another advantage is that it helps decide which features should be prioritized in future app updates.
Conduct competitor analysis
Comments on similar products in blogs, support pages, product reviews, and social media will reveal what attracts and doesn't attract your users. You'll also gain insight into what your users expect and how you can outperform competitors.
Rebuild your roadmap
App development roadmaps can change. You should anticipate such changes after launching your mobile app MVP.
To create a winning app, you need to focus on success metrics and orient yourself by them. By gathering feedback from users, you can track their behavior, see what is done well and what needs improvement.
Then your development team can make improvements to the missing points and decide which changes should be prioritized in the main product. After that, you can start implementing strategic changes. The implemented changes should align with the product's key performance indicators and be consistent with the new roadmap.
Best methods for prioritizing features
So, above we discussed how to prioritize features for an MVP. In addition, there are several reliable methods that will help you effectively identify the key features of your mobile app and structure the entire process in the right order.
Of course, before using any particular method, you need to deeply understand which one suits you and can bring the most benefit in your unique situation.
For now, we will list the most popular approaches to prioritizing mobile product features. Each will allow you to compare features, highlight the most important ones, and consider user preferences.
MoSCoW
The first product prioritization method that comes to mind is MoSCoW. It allows you to divide features into four categories:
- Must have. Includes features without which your app cannot function or cannot be viable.
- Should have. Those without which your product can work, but it's better to implement them in the first phase.
- Could have. They will help you stand out from competitors; not necessary to develop now, but you'll want to add them later when working on a full solution.
- Won't have. Your product can manage without them, but they are worth revisiting when you approach a full-featured app.
RICE scoring
The RICE scoring method determines which MVP app features should be included first, based on one simple formula and four criteria. They are:
- Reach. How many users can be reached?