MVP Development Cycles

Your MVP Checklist: Build, Measure, Learn, Repeat!

Don’t launch a perfect product no one wants. Launch an MVP everyone needs.

1. Define Your Hypothesis (Start with a question!):

• What’s the riskiest assumption about your product or customer? (e.g., “People want to share dog park ratings.”).
• What’s the minimum feature set to test this?

2. Build Your MVP (Minimum Viable Product):

• What’s the absolute simplest version that still delivers core value?
• It must be functional and usable (not buggy or half-baked).
• Action: Focus on one key problem/feature only. (e.g., A map of dog parks, but no ratings yet).

3. Measure User Interaction:

• How will you know if your hypothesis is true or false?
• What metrics will you track? (e.g., daily active users, feature usage, conversion rates).
• How will you collect direct feedback? (Surveys, interviews).

4. Learn & Decide:

• Analyze the data. What did users actually do?
• Did your MVP prove your hypothesis?
• Decision: [ ] Iterate (improve within the same strategy) or [ ] Pivot (change strategy based on new learning)?

Golden Rule: The goal of an MVP is to learn, not to earn. Speed of learning is your biggest advantage.