How can iteration help you develop a successful minimum viable product?

Iteration is a fundamental concept in product development, especially in the tech industry. It refers to the process of repeating a cycle of activities to improve a product or process. In the context of developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), iteration means creating a basic version of your product, testing it, learning from the feedback, and then refining the product. This cycle of build, measure, and learn is repeated until the product meets the market needs effectively.

Iteration appears when reality hits your dream and vision to show you you were wrong. Some people accept to be wrong. Some don't. Those who succeed are always those that have understand that you can't bend reality. It will always bend you. Iteration defines your resilience, your intelligence and your ability to see and understand reality.

In my experience, you can’t create a valuable product without iteration. In fact, getting feedback “fast, early, and often” is so crucial for tech startups that the timeline for deploying code (aka: iterating on the product) has shrunk from months (waterfall) to weeks (scrum) to hours (continuous delivery). As a screenwriter I developed the mantra that “all writing was re-writing” and gave myself permission to write a bad draft… as a venture-backed founder, I believe the same is true. Don’t let great get in the way of good enough!!

With Games, I find the best way to get started is to build the rawest version of a paper prototype and to play it in the office. Invite colleagues to play on Friday at the end of the work week. Do not provide pizza or other incentives. Gather feedback. If they come back, they liked the game enough to continue that development path. Have a new version ready weekly. Keep going until your game takes a life of its own in the office. Do not try to 'find the fun' later in the product cycle. Find the Fun first.

As a founder, you will be iterating a lot, especially in the early days of your startup. My startup Devshired started as a platform to certify no-code developers and after a few iterations became what it is today, a marketplace to hire no-code developers. There is still a learning components where developers can upskill, but it is not the code brand and offering of Devshired. How does this work? You simply launch and get feedback from your users to understand how they’re interacting with your product and to test which your many assumptions were true and which were not. You then use this data to go back to the drawing board and improve on the solution, which might come in the form of a slight pivot or a major pivot.

When you're developing an MVP, your primary goal is to validate your product idea with minimal resources. Iteration is crucial here because it allows you to test your hypotheses about the product and its market fit without investing in full-scale development. By iterating, you can identify the core features that resonate with your early users and discard those that don’t, ensuring a more focused and cost-effective development process.

An MVP is something for testing and improvement. You have to go back and forth on it. It has to have bugs. It will have flaws. Hence, you really need to give it multiple versions and time to breathe and perfect itself.

In the startup world, perfection is the root of all evil. If you keep your hypotheses under wraps, delaying testing and market validation, you're in for a rude awakening down the road. A bulk of your market hypotheses will be wrong in one way or another, and will require readjustments, often times more than once. Which is where the concept of "iterations" becomes useful. Iterations allow you to work on a single, high blast-radius value proposition, to be rolled out to the wider market every X weeks. Feedback starts trickling in early on, which informs your future iterations. Now this cyclical process doesn't guarantee success per se, but it blockades a lot of common pitfalls.

Iterative development is a highly effective strategy in software and product development. This approach significantly reduces risk by allowing for frequent evaluation and adaptation, ensuring that any issues are identified and addressed early in the development cycle. By focusing on a smaller, functional MVP, teams can bring their product to market more swiftly, as they don't get bogged down in perfecting every feature from the outset. Moreover, iterative development fosters a continuous feedback loop, with each iteration allowing for rapid incorporation of improvements. This ongoing refinement process not only enhances the product's quality but also ensures it evolves in line with user needs and market trends.

We start with an assumption of what we is valuable to others. It’s a problem - and we want to make a solution. Our solutions are almost always imperfect at the start… so we have to give it a few attempts. We also don’t know if it solves the whole problem. Iteration lets us go from “this is definitely going to work” to “this won’t work exactly how we wanted”… and then we try something new. And again. And again. And again. Until we hit, “okay, this works…” And ?? until everyone else is shouting “yeah this works!” MVPs are the start. Iteration is the journey.

1. Start with a Clear Hypothesis - What are you trying to learn or prove with your MVP? 2. Build a Basic Version - Develop a simple version of your product that focuses on your hypothesis. 3. Collect Feedback - Gather user feedback through surveys, interviews, or usage data. 4. Analyze and Learn - Understand what the feedback means for your product. 5. Make Improvements - Refine your MVP based on the insights gathered. 6. Repeat - Go back to step 3 and continue the cycle until your product fits the market needs.

The mistake I made years ago was presenting the MVP to anybody in my network. I would get many opinions and advice! I realized it was a big mistake. Everybody has an opinion, but in reality, what matters is the feedback of your targeted audience.

Embracing failure in MVP iteration ?? Iterating your MVP? Remember, failure is a goldmine of insights! ?? ?? Step 1: start with a hypothesis and build a prototype. ?? Step 2: test with customers. Not all results will validate your assumptions - and that's okay! ?? Step 3: analyze the feedback. Contradictions aren't setbacks; they're learning opportunities to delve deeper into customer needs. ??? Step 4: adapt your prototype. Use both successes and failures to inform your revisions. ?? Repeat: Each iteration is a step closer to a product that truly resonates with your customers. Failures aren't just bumps in the road; they're signposts guiding you to success!

There are several ways to iterate the MVP: 1/ Really understand the problem from your customer perspective 2/ Take notes not just on customer feedback but ALSO on actual customer interactions 3/ Leverage data when you have enough data points. Then update the product and share it with a few customers or potential customers to see if they like the update. Also, if possible, conduct A/B testing to see just how much more customers like the product.

Sure! I see making an MVP better as not too tricky. You can do it better and faster by following a few easy steps. First, start with a clear idea of the problem you want to fix and who you're fixing it for. Then, make a simple version of your idea showing the most important parts. Give it to the people you're aiming for and see what they think. Get info and clues from them to check if your idea works or not. Then, look at what you've learned and change your simple version to make it better. Show it to the people again, see what happens, and keep doing this until you've made something that really helps the people you're aiming for and also works for your business goals.

Reduced Risk:- Minimizes the risk of building something nobody wants. Cost-Effectiveness:- Saves money by focusing on what’s essential. Faster Learning Curve:- Accelerates the learning process about the market and user needs. Increased Flexibility:- Allows for adapting to user feedback and changing market trends. Better Product-Market Fit:- Enhances the chances of developing a product that truly satisfies customer needs.

Building trust with iteration ?? Iterating your MVP? It's more than just refining features; it's about building customer trust through transparency! ?? ?? Involve customers: share your iterative journey. Turn each cycle into a chance for customer feedback and collaboration. ?? Feedback integration: use customer insights to tailor your MVP. This isn't just about product quality; it's about resonance. ?? Transparent communication: openly share successes and learnings. Honesty builds trust and fosters a collaborative spirit. ?? Outcome: a product aligned with real user needs, fostering customer loyalty and satisfaction. Remember, iteration isn't just a development tool; it's a relationship-builder with your customers!

Iterative thinking can help to shorten or even eliminate a costly and sometimes painful learning curve. There is an old saying: effectiveness is doing the right things, and efficiency is doing things well. The worst situation that a company can find itself in is doing the wrong things well. When implemented correctly, iteration promotes tremendous benefits. Promotes internal and external communication, a systematic and efficient way to learn from experiences, and delivery of high-quality products that meet the ever-evolving needs of your customers. This contributes to sustained success in a rapidly changing and competitive landscape. Lastly, effective iteration also ensures that your company is not doing the wrong things well.

L'itération dans le développement d'un MVP, c'est un peu comme sculpter une ?uvre d'art à partir d'un bloc de pierre. Chaque cycle d'itération élimine les imperfections, affine les contours, et rapproche progressivement la création de sa forme finale. C'est un processus de perfectionnement constant, où les retours clients agissent comme les coups de ciseau d'un sculpteur, pour révéler la forme la plus séduisante et fonctionnelle du produit.

Fast Learning: By releasing a minimum viable product (MVP) or an initial version of a solution early on, you can gather feedback and insights quickly. This helps to understand what exactly the customer needs. Continuous Improvement: It's not just about fixing issues but about enhancing what already works well. With each iteration, you have the opportunity to refine features, optimize performance, and add value incrementally. Risk Reduction: Reduce the risk of failure and progress the quality of the product. Feature Prioritization: Not all features are created equal, and iteration enables effective feature prioritization. By analyzing user feedback, you can identify the most impactful features and prioritize them in subsequent iterations.

Time-Consuming:- This can be a lengthy process, requiring patience and persistence. Resource Intensive:- Requires adequate resources to build, test, and refine. Feedback Quality:- Dependence on the quality and reliability of user feedback. Scope Creep:- Risk of expanding beyond the MVP’s original scope. Decision Making:- Challenges in deciding when to pivot or persevere with the current iteration.

While identifying problems that your users want something “different” can be easy but figuring out exactly what they want and implementing them are a real challenge. Oftentimes, user feedback is vague and you’ll have to read between the lines. It might feel like throwing darts in the dark. More than often, you’ll have scrap most of your tech to build again. That is painful and you’ll try to work with the old tech itself. That either creates tech debt making iterations difficult or worse deters you from hard iterations itself.

Perhaps more important than iteration is the actual sales and marketing of the product. One can iterate endlessly and continuously refine a product but teams NEED to get real customer feedback and engagement. The true measure of the product is ultimately how many customers want to use the product and will use the product. Every company needs product market fit. One can't focus solely on iteration and the product at the expense of go to market sales and marketing. Additionally, ensure you are iterating on a problem that is important to a customer. One might end up creating an excellent product but the market for the product is actually limited or small.

Iterating your MVP is not always as data driven as we would like to. But why? MVPs are a product stripped of everything else besides the core feature that delivers value. So the users that provide you with data are only early adopters and they are not always representative of the large majority you want to sell to. As a result, the data you get from them can only get you as far as what they need and love about your product. But what about everyone else ??

Thinking that you must be right at all costs is a key challenge of iteration. First-time entrepreneurs especially are bullish on their idea that will make them rich. They blame time, funding ecc. In reality, the challenge is to overcome the thought that you must be right and others are wrong. If customers are not using your product they likely don't need it. Stop thinking that you must be right. Build something. Check transaction data. If it's not working iterate. Thinking you must be right and confidence are not the same thing. You can have confidence in yourself that you're going to find the solution, without being limited by the idea that must be right from day one.

A) Early Users Don't Speak for Everyone Just because the first few people who try your product like it, doesn't mean everyone else will. B) Basic Version Might Be Too Simple An MVP is a simple version of your product. Sometimes it's too basic to appeal to most people. C) Not Figuring Out Why People Aren't Interested. With my previous project, I didn't stop to think why more people weren't using our product. D) Building More Before Knowing What's Wrong. It's a mistake to make your product more complicated before understanding why it's not popular yet. E) Always Check If People Really Want It. Keep asking if your product is something a lot of different people would actually want to use.

Set Clear Goals:- Know what you want each iteration to achieve. Stay Agile:- Be ready to adapt based on what your iterations reveal. Focus on Core Features:- Prioritize improvements that enhance the core value of your product. Engage Your Users:- Build a community around your product that's engaged in its evolution.

Here are some steps to consider behavioral insights for MVP iteration: 1. Understand Basic Behavioral Principles 2. Use analytics tools, A/B testing, and other methods to collect data on how users interact with your MVP 3. Conduct user interviews, surveys, and usability testing to gather information on user behavior and their experiences with your product 4. Develop Behavioral Hypotheses 5. Design small, strategic changes to your MVP based on your behavioral hypotheses 6. Run controlled experiments such as multivariate tests to see how these changes affect user behavior 7. Analyze the results of your tests to see if your hypotheses were correct 8. Use the insights gained from the experiments to make decisions about product changes

The Lean methodology are being adopted for a reason. People want to see products asap. They don’t want to wait years for a release. They expect bugs; as long as they’re workable bugs.

Iteration is great, to validate and improve your results. My advice is: we ware of iteration. Perfect kills good, and you are looking for customers, not just a product. Once your product is SLC –simple, likable and complete– go to market, and let your customers know about it, enjoy it, crave it and ask for more. Remember, your product has to satisfy a need in a profitable manner. Excess iteration limits your ability to do so, and companies need sales to live and thrive.