Part 2: Idea to MVP - Get it done.

In Part 1: Idea to MVP, I covered "Idea Validation". Before you go lock, stock and barrel investing your time and energy into an idea, you need to have a rough idea on what you are dealing with in terms of people, process, technology, market, constraints and the customers. Fail at understanding any of these imperatives and you are looking at a flawed implementation with relatively less than desirable results. 

Assuming you have gone through Part 1: Idea to MVP, let's get down to the process of developing an MVP.

STAGE 1: Idea to Features

Ideas don't sell, it's the product that sells. A product is a collection of features, not ideas. So, logically, once you have validated your idea (for viability), what should be your next step?

The next step should be to start writing down the requirements (features) in a document. Write User Stories, Scenarios or call them Use Cases - in essence you are trying to capture how your customers will use the product. This gives you a very good idea of level of effort required to design and develop the product. 

Tip: Requirements and Features are very similar. A requirement is the description of what user wants from the product, and a feature is how your product gets it done. 

If the user's requirements are fulfilled by your product in a simple manner with great user experience, then the users will love your product. 

STAGE 2: Prioritize the Feature List

All features are not that important though they seem so. You can easily prioritize the feature list based on various dimensions by performing the IMPACT ANALYSIS for including or removing this feature from the product. You check the following things:- Does the feature empower the customer?- Does it enhance the user experience?- Will it help you make money?- Is it a business or technology enabler that you can't do without?- Is it required for compliance (for your product to be legal)?Once you are done with impact analysis on each feature, you will have a list of features classified as MUST have, SHOULD have, and NICE to have. 

STAGE 2: Develop Personas

A persona is a role or a character adopted by the user while using your product. A software can also be defined as a collection of actions that these users with various personas perform on your system. Feature and Persona development goes hand in hand. Sometimes, we, as product creators think persona development is not important, as the features are very obvious. The question is: Obvious to who? and are you sure about it? Let's say we have a middle aged user by the name Jonathan. We have to put ourselves in Jonathan's shoes and think how will Jonathan use your product. This exercise, though it seems tedious, should be done for every single persona who uses your product. Let's jump into Jonathan's shoes, and ask ourselves some questions:- Why and how will our product help Jonathan?- Will it help Jonathan reach his goals?- How valuable is our product to Jonathan?- If we din't add this feature, will Jonathan still be able to achieve his goals?- Can we walkthrough (step by step) how will this work for Jonathan?

STAGE 2: Re-prioritize your Feature List

Once you have a clear personas in place, revisit the feature list and order it in the order of most important to least important features based on importance of personas. You will have your prioritized feature list in place. Action Tip: You can simply list the personas and features related to each persona. Sometimes 1 feature is relevant for more than one persona, so be it. List that feature twice and give it a higher weight in your prioritized feature list. 

STAGE 3: Time to test your findings

You have a prioritized feature list in place! The next step is share your findings with a test audience. Let's say you have developed some personas, it's time to reach out to people who fit those personas and interview them, ask them questions. Check if they feel the same way about the product as you thought they did. 

STAGE 3: Show the results to experts

Once you have reached out to your test audience, and conducted surveys to understand your customers better; as a next step, its always helpful to reach out to some industry experts to validate your findings. At times, these experts have a broader picture of the market place. You go to your customers to get the MICRO picture and you go to the experts to get the MACRO picture. Once you have completed this exercise at STAGE 3, you will have a focussed Product Requirements Document in place. This document can contain the following:1. Requirements 2. List of features3. List of personas 4. Use Cases or User Journeys (how will these personas use your product)5. Wireframes (if your product needs a user experience or a tangible design)6. Visual Design (colors, typography, branding etc)7. Some guidelines on technology (optional)NOTE: PRDs are organic documents that get updated as and when product team gets more clarity on features, personas, concept, wireframes and designs. In other words, you will not make a perfect PRD the first time around. You will improve it over a period of time. 

STAGE 4: Product Design!

In the section above, I have mentioned that a PRD should have wireframes and visual designs. Iteration 1 of your PRD (product requirements document) will seldom have design artifacts in them but over a period of time, with concept maturing, you will start adding design artifacts to your PRD. Product Design requires you to focus on the User Experience of the product. Finalizing a product design is an iterative process, like any other. A good product design is generally a collective work of a good executive team, a great product manager and and awesome product designer.

STAGE 4: Product Design!

It is important to understand the difference between UX design and technical design. At Stage 4, we are talking about User Experience design. A Visual Interface for your product. 

STAGE 4: The Wireframes

Wireframes are important. You can design the wireframes for your product on a piece of paper, with a pencil and a rubber or you can use multitude of tools available. Some good tools that you can use to build sketches are: Omnigraffle, Moqups.com, Photoshop, and Sketch for Mac. If you create simple visualizations of your product's interface early on, and share it with stakeholders / other team members, their feedback can help you refine the concept. Sketches are easy to make, share, and get feedback on. Concept finalization is done using wireframes, not visual designs. Wireframes are a critical part of product design. 

STAGE 4: Wireframe - an example

This is a random example of how wireframes look like. To me sketches and wireframes are the same thing. 

STAGE 4: Visual Designs!

Visual designs are the next step after you have a concept in place (wireframe is a representation of a concept). Now, you start working with product team, other team members to create a brand identity for your product. This means you will have to decide a color palette, the fonts (typography) and other visual elements that come together to create a final design for your product. In layman terms, we can say that you have to fill colors to your wireframe, and decide the fonts for your product and then stick to it. Under the hood, a lot goes into making a great visual design. The color palettes, the typography, the interactions between the user and the interface, the interactions between the various elements of your product, the transitions from one portion of your product to another. In other words, its an art to appeal to both conscious and subconscious portions of your customer's mind. 

STAGE 4: Visual Design - an example

A random example of a visual design of a mobile app called The Fitting Room. Note that brand identity and image are starting to shape up, the color palette has been finalized and visual elements are in place. 

BOOTSTRAP, ANGEL OR THE SEED CAPITAL

Well, if you have crossed stage 4, this means that you have a tangible product concept in place. At this point you may or may not have money / resources to proceed forward. With a properly baked PRD, you can go to Angel Investors or friends or family to raise capital. Before this stage, no Angel Investor will entertain you. I have come across many people who want to sit in their comfy cozy jobs, and want to raise money before they jump into the startup scene. It does not work that way. No one will give you their money unless they are convinced that you are really serious about building a startup, and the only way you can prove that is by quitting your job and jumping in the arena. If you don't do that, you are sending a wrong message to investors. You think you are saying - "I cannot take the risk of leaving my full time job" but the investor is hearing - "I am not confident of my product concept so I will take a risk at your money, not my career". Investors are not stupid. They come across ideas and product concepts on a daily basis, the only way they will be interested, is when they see you put your neck in. Either ways, don't go to investors before having a product concept in place - if not a Visual Design, at least a Wireframe is a must. 

STAGE 5: Incorporating your Startup

If you have not done this already, you should start thinking of incorporating your startup, assembling a team and getting ready for developing the V1 (version 1) of your product. It's a personal view, but I think that incorporating after you have a tangible design in place as it's own advantages, it can make you look very good as from day one you have a path to pursue, direction to follow. In short, don't incorporate at an idea level. Get a bit realistic and focus on designing a product first. You can find many consultants and industry pundits who can help you incorporate the right way once you have a clear direction. 

STAGE 6: Prototyping or Product Development

This is the time to start developing your product. The three most important choices that you will make while kicking off product development are:- People (finding the people with right skill set and work ethic is important) - Process (Weekly Sprints, Micro-releases, nightly builds etc)- Technology (which technology stack to use)Product Development is the first engineering exercise you will undertake while building your startup and the product. You can either build your own technology team or simply outsource development to a turnkey software development company. If your product is a piece of hardware, then it is most likely that you will go for prototyping before you undertake industrial manufacturing of your product. 

STAGE 6: Start thinking about Customer Acquisition

While your team is busy developing the product, you should start thinking about acquiring customers. You should start brainstorming a customer acquisition strategy. The easiest way to create a customer acquisition strategy is to go where the customers go.Step 1: Take the list of personas that you have, and break them down into customer segmentsStep 2: Now try to follow their day, understand their lifestyle, habits, needs and wantsStep 3: Create a list of distribution channels visited by your potential customersStep 4: Separate the list of distribution channels into free and paidStep 5: Establish the budget for each channel either in terms of time or moneyStep 6: Creating marketing campaigns for each channel with a clear goalOnce your product starts nearing product launch, it is time to revisit your plan and refine it. You can also prioritize the distribution channels based on their reach and your budget.

STAGE 6: Product Packaging and Release

While the business team is busy creating marketing plans and a robust customer acquisition strategy, the technology team should focus on lining up all the prerequisites for a successful product launch. All technical checklists should be in place and verified before the marketing team kicks off the launch marketing campaign. If your software is in development, or staging, it has to be deployed in production, verified for sanity and then a thumbs up is given to the marketing team to go ahead with launch campaign. 

Congratulations! You have an MVP in place

If you have launched successfully and early adopters have started using your product, you have an MVP in place.