Ever wondered why every successful business has built a Rapid Prototype of their software idea before building a Minimal Viable Product out of it. Here’s why?

Anything big or complicated you see being built, is based on many small efforts and different tiny parts that come together to give it a final prominent shape. Take an airplane for example. Can you imagine one without building a detailed blueprint and a visual schema prior to building it in its actual form and putting it through to the production facility.

Well, no question arises. Likewise, when you are building a software or a web or mobile application, it is equally necessary to first get and arrange all things in one place to take a preview and ascertain if the thought is being implemented right and the idea is moving in the right direction.

That is why, while you decide to initiate the project and you are in the process of building the roadmap, it is important to define the requirements and bring the functional prototype of the product on papers. Not doing that, increases your chances of risk and failure. Also, this could cost you high as you may need to rework on your project to set it right.

Getting started with Rapid App Prototyping

Here, the best way to do it as recommended by experts is through Rapid Prototyping. Now, what is that?

When you take up to build a quick full-scale, finely detailed and descriptive model of an MVP or an application product it is called Rapid Prototyping. This is to allow a comprehensive pre-defined idea of how the product would look like when it is built. This comes handy to design and aids in building the product right and take it to a likely execution by planning and applying changes and tweaks in the wireframe or specimen itself in advance. This avoids going bad or erroneous with the final design and saves a lot of efforts and keeps quality greatly in control. Also, as it is approached in a rapid manner the work is kept straight and compact and the prototypes are just built on a draft level to achieve and communicate a comprehensive basic idea of the product without adding to the time and effort of application development.

The main advantages of Rapid Prototyping

Rapid Prototyping is an inevitable part of modern app development processes and it is kept on priority by all progressive planners and informed development units. Here are some of the major advantages that you get to put up with going with Rapid Prototyping:

1. You can validate your idea up early in the process and avoid any goof-ups later on. This allows you to approach the product well and execute it right.

2. Get to ascertain and clarify the project requirements and be prepared to diagnose and combat possible risks and challenges. So that you don’t have to implement any changes into the process doing too much of back and forth.

3. As you build the prototype you can circulate it to a closed group of users and take their opinion on the idea so that you can take steps accordingly and make changes to your plan before actually rolling it out.

4. You can test if the UI and UX of the app are good to go with or not. This is because you get to know how the app communication flows and interfaces with the user and how it combines with the UI elements like CTAs, functional components and events, to preview and visualize how it would look and feel eventually.

5. You get the clarity of the vision, that plays a pivotal role in driving the whole process of development. This vitally helps in optimizing the time and quality of development and help you save on cost.

6. When you are ready with your concept and everything is illustrated well with the help of your product prototype, you get the power to demonstrate and communicate the potential of your software product. Also, this helps you to pitch your idea to investors and VCs, so that you have the initial capital procured for your venture.

When is it the right time to build a prototype?

Building a prototype is always a time-dependent practice and it should only take place when the right time arrives. Now, when is that right time? What order it should follow? And how it should be placed in your product timeline to grab the best results out of it? How do you know.

Well, if you ask this question taking a general case and assuming a regular need, it should ideally start when you have worked on functional requirements and have the clarity of what all functionalities and features you would like to go with. Also, this should be well accompanied by the UI/UX part of the solution that is being worked in parallel so that the functional entity meets the design perspective and communication aspect of the product and allows a good degree of validity and viability to build an MVP there further. Here, this should be completed well before you are planning to get your product tested at the initial level and of course before you have to pitch it to an investor.

Final Word

These cumulatively come up as a good enough reason to why you should be planning to go with Rapid App Prototyping to well attend your product idea and build a competent solution out of it. No matter, whether you are looking to build a complicated or a simple product, whether it is a large-scale application or an auxiliary solution, it’s always suggested to go with Rapid Prototyping to get the MVP built right and in time.

To have the best prototyping and app development solutions for your app idea you can visit ITFirms and connect with best app development companies from different parts of the world.

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He was the first to mention that a new business doesn’t needto deploy a full-featured product immediately. Alternatively, there is a better approach to product development where you can keep adding different features and functionality with time as the model is validated by the real audience in the market. This is what MVP is- a prior effort to managing risk and getting a market-fit product- be it hardware, software, website, mobile app or a service.

We believe this sounds plausible to every business owner as they manage the challenge of building the right product for their audience without actually developing it. Here, we’ll discuss about developing an MVP for a mobile app startup.

Minimum Viable Product in App Development

Developing a mobile app is a costly affair. It requires an expert app development company to do it for you, especially when you are a startup. But then too, even the smartest developers can’t be 100% right in predicting how will the appbehave after its fully developed. They also need to create a working model of your app idea- like a very basic version of your application with minimum featuresthat can be released in the market to test the validity of the idea.

Building an MVP is much cheaper than building a perfectly-working mobile application, so this saves on a huge cost and time for the app owner. You may save on development, marketing expenses and bug fixing. This makes an MVP a valuable option because it involves just a part of the app business strategy. The main benefits of developing an MVP before the final product are:

• Real feedback by real-time users
• Reduces business risks
• Less investment
• Validate your product viability before final launch
• Pitch your idea for funding
• Prepare your app for a smoother discharge
• Can earn initial income through MVP

What does an MVP development cycle look like?

If this is your first minimum viable product development, you may not know the steps involved in developing it.  The MVP stages include customers on each product stage, but for startups, it becomesmore challenging. And thus, we’re here to help you as a starter. The difference between the second and the third approach (in the above picture) is that to invite funds from investors to market a car, you need to represent them the MVP of a car (from the start) and not the scooter.

The bottom line is that what you envision, you need to expose exactly the same to your investors- it’s just that you show them a model in advance, highlighting the core features of your product.

The process involves the following steps:

• Defining a hypothesis for testing
• Creating a requirement and project scope list
• Mention separately all the products and features you want in your business app
• Describe what makes your app unique from others- like new algorithms that will disrupt the market
• Prioritizing features in the lists- like which will create most value in short-term and which will be useful for long-term business growth
• Categorize features into core features and add-ons.
• Launch and release the MVP
• Record the feedback of first few users. Discover the bottlenecks and perform a SWOT analysis.
• Analyze and process the data gathered
• Make a new hypothesis and enumerate new, improved features
• Repeat the above

All top app services have followed this path before launching their real product in the market.

How much investment is required?

If you do it on your own, an MVP costs you nothing at all. But this won’t work well in 99% cases. Instead, it will be more distressing than the cost you bear in MVP. So, it’s better to hire either a freelance mobile app developer or a full-scale mobile app development company to develop the app for you.

For an app like Twitter, building an MVP costs around $50,000 and for Facebook, it costs you around $500,000. Shocked? Please don’t be! Not every app takes this much amount of money to build an MVP.

The costs estimates depend on the time it takes to create the MVP and also on the kind of solution you plan to execute. For a simple mobile app, its takes around a minimum of a month and a half, which calculates to around $7k-$13k. If the product is complex, the cost may range between $15k-$20k.

What makes a company your best development partner is that how they stand out in creating the list of features. Some top mobile app development companies have moved to a more modern method of listing the features through a two-dimensional map that considers user activities and vision of the product. They define minimum but valuable feature list through story mapping- as a part of their agile working methodology. The ultimate aim is to allow your users to receive an individual, customized solution while they use your services.

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