How to Create an MVP Roadmap- From Idea to Launch

Have you ever felt like you have a million-dollar business idea but are unsure how to put something together?

Well, that’s where we come in. Impala Intech is offering free consultation for all you founders who might have a brilliant idea and want to give life to an MVP roadmap.

Let’s discuss the effective product roadmap that every MVP founder should follow from startup consent to the final blastoff; we’ve left no stone unturned. Consider it a step-by-step guide to getting your product out there successfully.

But first, let’s start with why 90% of startup MVPs fail.

Why Do Startup MVPs Fail?

The most common issue startup founders face when publishing an MVP is understanding their target demographic better.

When you don’t have a clear vision of the problem you are offering to solve for your user base, your MVP has a higher chance of failing.

Though we discussed the reasons for MVPs failing in a previous article, here are the top three reasons from there that we think are the true reasons why startup MVPs fail:

1. No Target Market Niche: The market you’re gunning for doesn’t exist or is so small that it doesn’t validate the idea of your MVP
2. No Specific Problem-Solving Goal: Your product needs to be sure about the user pain point it will solve, or it’s trying to do too many things at once and failing at all of them.
3. Failed To Meet User Expectations: When an MVP doesn’t offer the solutions the user base is looking for, the users lose interest, and the MVP fails.

What Benefits Do You Get for Building an MVP?

When you start the product development process immediately, you eliminate a few risks of falling behind by getting your idea out there with a functioning product. Let’s discuss the top 5 benefits of building an MVP:

1. You Focus on The Most Important Features: The primary goal of any MVP is to solve users’ problems with the product’s features. When building an MVP, you only focus on the features people need the most, making your development cycle more efficient.
2. Resource & Cost Optimization: When focusing on only the app’s core features, you’re optimizing your resources and costs to focus only on the most important rather than a massive budget for a fully-fledged product.
3. Early Access For Target Users: MVP helps you create a good relationship with your potential clients and existing user base by offering them your product early. It also opens up ways to receive feedback on your application that you can use to improve the functionalities of the MVP.
4. Improved User Experience: Users need to be more sure about their exact demands. When you present a product with a specific design in front of them, they will provide feedback and suggestions. You can use the data to fine-tune the application to everyone’s needs, boosting the overall user experience.
5. High MVP Value: The more you optimize your app, the more perfect it gets. The better it gets, the value of the product increases as well. A well-furnished product with high value can be considered one of the greatest assets for any business, including yours.

The Only MVP Roadmap Checklist You’ll Ever Need

With Impala’s help, you’ll have an MVP roadmap checklist in your hands with details, and it’s the only one you’ll ever need to follow if you want to see a successful MVP launch.

Without further ado, let’s look at the validation stages before diving deep into the details.

1. Map out the Ideas to Validate
2. Analyze market needs for Opportunities
3. Define Unique Value Proposition
4. Understand the Target Audience Journey
5. Plan a pain and gain map
6. Prioritize the Key features
7. Carefully plan your budget and time
8. Launch your MVP
9. Test and Iterate your MVP
10. Implement the Build, Measure, Learn Cycle

Step 1: Map Out the Ideas to Validate

You may have different assumptions about the user actions of your target audience. But it’s only partially predictable. The best way is to assume a few possible user actions that can be validated.

When designing a product with a professional team, an expert product manager can point out all the core ideas you can validate with your MVP.

“The MVP has just those features considered sufficient for it to be of value to customers and allow for it to be shipped or sold to early adopters. Customer feedback will inform future development of the product.”

― Scott M. Graffius

Step 2: Analyze Market Needs for Opportunities

When you have ideas, it’s time to do thorough market research to understand if the ideas of your solutions are needed on the market.

When you understand the exact pain points a certain market has, you can plan how to turn the pain points into gain points. Then you can plan your development cycle accordingly.

Step 3: Define Unique Value Proposition

There is a high chance that the idea you have already has a few competitors who already have products on the market. So, what are you bringing to the table to outperform your competitors? That’s a Unique Value Proposition.

When creating your market strategy, UVP is something you should always think through. A strong value proposition can lead to a higher rate of interested users and potential customers.

When solving problems no one else is, you ensure a higher success rate when the MVP launches.

Step 4: Understand the Target Audience Journey

At this step, the most reasonable action is to create an action plan for the user journey by understanding the target audience’s journey. In the journey, you need to identify all the actions that will benefit the users throughout the journey.

There are a few easy steps that you can take to figure out all the steps the users can take through their usage journey.

1. Identify Your Target Audience: The first (and pretty obvious) step to figuring it out is identifying your target market. Then identify the users within the market that will use and test your product. You should also figure out the user’s steps to use your app.
2. Identify The Story Endings For Your Target Audience: After figuring out the users, find out what end goal they’re trying to achieve using the product. When you have a clear image of the end goal of the user stories, it’s easier to map out the journey the users will take to reach that goal.
3. Decide on The Path Of Action For The Customers: When you know your users’ journey, you can set out a course of actions that are easy to perform, planning out a smooth user journey for all your potential users.

Step 5: Plan a Pain and Gain Map

Now, start identifying the users’ pain points during their everyday operations. Once completed, start finding ways to turn the pain points into gain points by solving the user’s issues.

When identifying the pain and gain points, you get to plan out the functions that must be included in the app and create a development plan accordingly.

When identifying the pain and gain points, it’s best to prioritize the points most users require. You can set the crucial ones apart by setting up a prioritization framework for each pain point.

Step 6: Prioritize the Key Features

Now that you have a thorough idea of all the pain and gain points, you can start mapping out the core functionalities of your product.

Focus on the functions that are a must if you’re willing to solve the core pain points of your user base. Then, create a finalized list of all the must-have features you’re implementing in the final product.

Set your development cycle, so the core features get implemented before your MVP is ready to be published in front of your target audience. It’ll make their user flow as smooth as possible.

Step 7. Carefully Plan Your Budget and Time

The best way to ensure a timely MVP roadmap completion is to budget your time and resources accordingly. Your goal is to develop each core feature within a reasonable expense amount and a limited time. That way, you/ your development team can move through different development stages.

Set your deadlines based on budget considerations and development cycle rather than on estimations and vague ideas.

Step 8: Launch your MVP

After you’re past the development phase, it’s time for the MVP product launch and gather MVP feedback from all your customers.

It would be best if you also kept an eye on all the important metrics related to the launch to measure your MVP success.

If the result you’re getting is not up to your expectations, you should keep it from demotivating you. Stick to your guns and keep developing your product till it can satisfy your user base.

Step 9: Test and Iterate your MVP

The more tests you run on your MVP, the more unique feedback you can gather from your users to find out what clicks with the audience.

A great way to do it is to launch different beta versions that only a limited number of users can access like a mobile or web mvp.

Different beta versions on different platforms will get you different reactions and customer feedback, which you can use to fine-tune your product.

To make the process more detailed, you should take all the user metrics of all different versions into consideration as well. The more data you collect, the more information you possess to act on.

Step 10: Implement the Build, Measure, Learn Cycle

Once you’ve settled on an initial product build that has gathered the most attention from all the monthly users, implement that build to make your customers feel validated.

When your customer base feels involved in the development cycle, they feel validated and are prone to provide better feedback by becoming active users.

Take note of all the feedback, measure the success rate of all the different releases, and learn from the mistakes of the past versions to create a better one to stick to the build-measure-learn process effectively.

How To Approach MVP Sofware Developers

Now that you have made it this far, you must have read the article. Congratulations on making it this far!

It can be challenging to take on the responsibility of creating an MVP roadmap and executing every step of your product vision flawlessly. We’re all human, and mistakes can happen even with complete concentration.

The problem comes from the mistakes ruining the potential for a great MVP launch. Now comes the question: how can you avoid this predicament?

1. You can build your MVP with a CTO
2. You can build your MVP with Freelance Developers
3. You can build your MVP with an Extended Team of Developer
4. You can build your MVP with a Software Development Company

Bringing in the perfect CTO can be a cumbersome task since there are times when people wait for months before coming back empty-handed before getting a CTO onboard.

The next best bet is to collaborate with a team of freelancers, where the biggest obstacle is balancing between managing your team remotely and marketing your product while the team builds products.

You can always hire a dedicated team to get your product out there and get the work with your team. This one is relatively safer than hiring a remote developer, but the risk of investment remains.

The safest option is to build your MVP with a software development company like Impala. They’ll create a roadmap and help you with all sorts of development and marketing procedures when all you need to do is provide details of your expectations.

To Wrap It All Up

Planning an MVP roadmap is best when experts assist you or supervise your work. Taking assistance from professionals is a great way to ensure your investment of time and resources is going in the right direction before you launch your MVP.

Do you need a proper MVP roadmap on the road to development? At Impala InTech, we are always ready to help you guide along the right path!

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