An MVP, or Minimum Viable Product, is the most basic version of a product that still provides value to users. Essentially, it's a simplified version of your idea that allows you to test it in the market and gather user feedback before investing large amounts of time and money in its full development. Imagine you want to create a travel planning application. Instead of developing all possible features from the start, you could launch an MVP that only allows users to search for destinations and save them to a favorites list. This still provides value to the user by helping them start planning their trips, but doesn't include all the additional features like flight and hotel bookings, personalized recommendations, etc.

By launching this MVP, you can see how users respond and which features they value most. With that feedback, you can iterate and improve your product incrementally, adding new features based on what really matters to your users.

Calculating the cost of an MVP can vary depending on several factors, such as product complexity, the team involved, the technological resources needed, and more.

Let's say you're developing a simple mobile application to help people find nearby restaurants and make reservations. Here are some key elements to consider when calculating the cost.

• Software Development

  This includes the cost of hiring developers to create the application. Depending on the experience and location of the development team, this can vary significantly. For example, you might estimate a cost of $10,000 to $50,000 for the initial MVP development.

• User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) Design

  You'll need designers to create an attractive and user-friendly interface. The cost of this can vary, but you might budget between $5,000 and $20,000 for the initial design.

• Infrastructure Costs

  If your application requires servers or cloud services to function, you'll need to account for infrastructure costs. For example, cloud hosting can cost between $50 to $200 per month, depending on the scale and demand of your application.

• Testing and QA (Quality Assurance)

  It's crucial to test your MVP to ensure it works correctly and provides a good user experience. This may involve additional costs for hiring quality testers or using automated testing tools.

• Marketing and Launch

  Although you're developing an MVP, you'll still need to do some marketing to launch it and get user feedback. This could include spending on digital advertising, public relations, or other marketing efforts. This cost can vary greatly depending on your specific strategies.

• Hidden Costs

  Hidden costs are rarely considered when developing an MVP, for example.

  • Requirement changes
  • Performance optimization
  • Security and regulatory compliance
  • Scalability
  • Third-party integrations
  • Team training

• Risks

  It's very common to fall into certain patterns that can put agile and on-time (within budget) MVP development at risk. At mirsoft_ we constantly study these patterns and have developed tactics and techniques to mitigate these risks with the help of co-founders.

  We're not reinventing the wheel, we're really putting into practice the best software development patterns to help new startups reach their destination. The most important things to avoid when we're taking our first steps, which many very talented teams but with little experience being first-time founders don't consider, are:

  • Over-engineering
  • Lack of a short feedback loop
  • Security and regulatory compliance
  • Software waste, things that probably no one needs
  • High dependence on unproven technologies
  • Long validation and approval times
  • Unoptimized workflows, too much technical bureaucracy

  This list is probably the most important thing you should consider when creating an MVP. Sometimes, having something "good" is better than "perfect", because "perfect" tends to be slow, which is unnecessarily expensive.

We don't claim at mirsoft_ to have the absolute and definitive definition of what an MLP is, but we certainly have it clear that the L makes the massive difference. From our perspective, an MVP is an instrument that will help us validate our idea as soon as possible, this is how we'll discover if there's a problem that needs a solution. We highly recommend defining early on what we want to achieve with the MVP. What are the KPIs that will define the success of this experiment? When does it stop being an MVP? When should we stop iterations? What indicators tell us it may not have the impact we desire? etc.

Unlike the MVP, a Minimum Loveable Product, or our favorite within mirsoft_, focuses not only on finding validation for a problem but also on adding a great digital experience for the client. It doesn't just try to be "transactionally" present in the user's life during their use, but also tries to add value around their environment. It can become something more emotional at times. We also usually associate it with a product with more alternative flows resolved for a client. Not just that they purchase within our service or acquire the product, but that they can also have P2P communication, be part of a community, associate it with more services, etc.