Building Your MVP With No Technical Team
Freelancing and Remote working
IT Projects are here to stay. With the development in the sector, people are now finding various cost-effective ways to make their work easier and faster. Freelancing, remote developers are now the trend in the field that can provide the same quality of work with lesser capital investment. Thus, small and medium sized companies prefer them over full time, high paid developers.
But, there are lot of factors to be considered to develop MVP for the projects. MVP or Minimum Viable Product” has been popularised by Eric Ries by ‘The Lean Startup book’ in 2011, after which it became the talk of the town and a very common term among all.
He described as: “[the] version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.
To develop a working MVP which is functional enough with the help of remote developers, some steps have to be taken in order to take care that the MVP is successful and project goes ahead.
Develop An MVP With Remote Developers
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Make a Plan with all the steps included
Any project needs a proper planning with all the critical features included so as to be prepared for any issue which may arise during the course of time. It should cover the needs of the customers and also define the business founder’s vision.System requirements specification (SRS) needs to be prepared listing all the features offered.
The plan should also include the various features, which are an important part:
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UI/UX design
The customer would directly come in contact with the UI/UX of the MVP and thus it should be accessible and easy to use.
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Code writing
The code should be reusable, so as to modify it as and when needed. The same person won’t be present always in the team; hence such a code which would be modifiable by anyone should be used.
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Testing
Testing any MVP would provide the idea of how the app would be developed in the future. Thus, everything should be functional at this stage.
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Deploy and launch
Once the testing is successful, deployment and launch of the same should be taken care of to proceed ahead.
2. Make a team or hire them
This is one of the major steps of the project planning, as there would be people from many places working on the same background. Even though the business owner is not from a technical background, he should be able to filter out people who would be working for him.
A person from a non-technical background is very beneficial to the company as one would be able to handle the marketing and strategy work. It is possible that the business owner would be having a lot of reference and can also work with them, which would benefit everyone. If the budget permits, a team can be hired to work, It would cost a bit more, but the work would be done accordingly.
3. Templates are present to ease the work
Some successful companies have been set up with the help of templates. They are very easy to work for and can lessen the work load on the team. They are ready to build and can be customized as per need. Some of the companies that have developed on templates include Facebook, Groupon, Amazon, Twitter etc.
Here are some of the tools that would help develop an MVP in the initial projects.
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Wordpress- Wordpress is one the most famous, used when it comes to building MVPs for forums, marketplaces, media outlets etc.
There are a variety of templates and themes, which can be installed easily. Plugins are a major plus point which help in developing. Companies like Mashable started their work through Wordpress.
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Shopify- It is one of the best ones when it comes to E-Commerce experience. It is integrated wih various facilities that would make the task easier for the business owners.
It also has many apps and plugins to enhance the experience.
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Bubble- If a business owner is thinking the budget to be decreased to great amount, so that very few people remain, he can use bubble which is like a dream come true for a non-technical person. There are options where one has to go through testing environments, and after attending it, can proceed ahead.
4. Stay in contact with the team
It is very necessary to be in constant touch with the team when working with them remotely. Holding video conferences regularly enables everyone to stay on the same page and discuss the progress in work, accomplishments, discuss issues faced by them and resolve them accordingly.
5. Trusting the team
For any relation to work out, trust is the one of the most important factors. If someone has hired a person, it is necessary to trust them wholly in the work they do, otherwise there may be tensions between them which would gradually affect the work.The team should be trusted with the flexibility provided to them and the necessary freedom is to be given to them so that they are able to perform under a free environment. It is very much important to launch an MVP before developing the actual one, as it provides us a trial run of how things may turn out to be. Some of the top world famous companies have worked on it and they are now soaring.
MVP Users
1. Facebook
When Facebook was launched, an MVP was done just to connect students of schools and colleges, together via messaging. The idea was just to connect friends through a social platform, and organize gatherings. This application was launched to test among users, and it gathered lots of feedback. This resulted in making the application extremely popular over the internet.
2. Twitter
Twitter was born when there was a need for SMS based platform. It was initially known as “twttr”,and when it was launched, it was a success and twitter launched itself.
3. Amazon
Amazon is the one of the pioneering companies in the field of MVP development, which was designed to sell online books in less price.
Conclusion
If there is one thing that startup founders need to understand about MVP product development, it is the fact that there is no single correct MVP building process. Make sure to consider the suggestions mentioned above, and you will be on your way to building a powerful MVP that can attract customers. Working with product experts is one of the best things you can do to guarantee your MVP project’s success. Remember, no matter how good the application idea is, it will most likely fail if it does not work and is not thought out strategically.
