Developing an MVP? Here are 3 Tools That Your Project Manager Should Use
In this modern age where countless mobile applications, web applications, digital products, and software tools simplify daily chores, having your product or app idea in one go can be a tough challenge. Here, MVP or Minimum Viable Product comes into the picture.
So, here we start the article by imagining your dream idea converting into reality. Now, you are just one step away from bringing your vision to life with the MVP development. Isn’t it exciting?
The most popular, feature-packed applications we all use today did not start their lives as such polished products. It took many years of work by several teams to mature these products. But putting pressure on the output is important for development teams, and the best way to get started is to create the minimum viable product (MVP). There are 3 types of tools mandatory for any startup that wants to create MVP. We have listed them below.
What exactly is an MVP?
Creating and releasing a successful software product is fraught with risks and challenges. It’s easy to waste time postponing the release date and fixing a costly bug without getting user feedback. The minimum possible product provides a production process that allows development teams to test, improve and expand over time.
An MVP is a product without its additives. It has minimal features that make it possible to realize the main function of the product. It only solves the most important problem that your product wants to solve.
Note: Creating an MVP sometimes makes no sense when your project requires a fully functional product. If so, a landing page that allows users to pre-order your product works best.
Why build an MVP? 7 key benefits
MVP offers several benefits to businesses that want to start a successful digital product:
- It focuses the development team on the key functions and value of your software.
- This reduces procrastination and distraction.
- It defines the primary goal of your product and allows developers to manage concerns about product underdevelopment.
- This helps to avoid cluttering the initial product with unnecessary features.
- This reduces rework time by allowing developers to detect errors along the way.
- This ensures a quick time to market
- This creates room for updates and new features that end-users will be asked to drive product evolution
Here are three tools we recommend for your project management.
1. A ticket management tool that helps define scope and monitor progress
When creating MVP, as you enhance the scope of your product, it is the first tool your project manager should use to manage tasks and processes.
Setting up processes that monitor product intent is a key task for your project manager.
If you do not properly monitor and manage your purpose, your final product will not work as you think. More than once, We have seen this lead to a product with a lot of rework, maximizing your time to the market and not eating up your budget.
Here, resist the urge to use spreadsheets to manage your purpose and monitor your progress. This is not a good option as both spreadsheets are prone to bugs and require a lot of effort to maintain.
Jira supports all development methods, which are flexible and allow your team to manage needs, view stories and collaborate. Moreover, it provides an overview of what has been done in the relevant estimates and what is still missing.
You can integrate Jira with a source code control tool – such as Kit – that can provide you with a complete clue from requirements to code.
Of course, this comes with the disadvantages of flexibility and versatility. The site may feel slightly swollen and slow. That being said, the pros outweigh the cons of this tool.
There are other tools on the market that are very simple to use and manage, and if your project and processes are simple, of course other tools will be just right.
2. A tool for creating a centralized information
The second mandatory tool your project manager should be used when building an MVP is a shared “wiki” or document repository.
That’s where Confluence comes into play.
Created by Atlassian (creators of Jira, Trello, BitBucket, etc.) It allows your team to create and store project documents in a shared repository.
Documentation plays an important role in your MVP development process and the association makes that process much easier.
And, as it’s also developed by Atlassian you can connect it directly to Jira. This eliminates the need for other shared drives and folders, meaning you can find what you need even quicker.
Confluence is not the only tool we would recommend for the task, however. Notion is another great tool to create your MVP’s centralized wiki.
You can also integrate Notion with Jira, and is more collaborative and up-to-date than Confluence.
3. A Collaborative Brainstorming Tool
The third and final tool that your project manager should use when setting up your MVP is a composite brainstorming tool.
Here Miro wins in our view.
The ability to collaborate and create visual documents in real-time is invaluable.
Wrapping Up
The above tools will help you ensure your team is able to stay on track. They help you provide visibility to every stakeholder at every stage of the project.
The minimum viable product, or MVP, is a crucial reality check phase that your understanding of how your users and buyers perceive your product is on the mark. It’s all about gathering the maximum amount of knowledge through the minimum feature set to prove (or disprove) your most crucial hypotheses about your product’s viability. The difference between the MVP stage and the Prototype stage is your product must be BOTH commercially viable and production viable under real-world conditions while excelling at change based on new information.
But to ensure that your learnings are accurate, it’s wise to balance care and consideration with agility. Balancing curiosity and passion for your product’s potential is probably the hardest part of these stages in a product’s lifecycle.
At Smarteer, we strive to minimize time to value, solve for a real need, and excel at change. Creating an MVP puts these foundational principles into practice. Learn more about Smarteer services and how we can help you create a minimum viable product to test and validate your assumptions with real customers by contacting an expert today.
Thanks for reading!
