Now that we have a clear Problem-Solution Architecture and a predictable User Funnel Strategy, it’s time to dive into defining the actual features of your app. I know, you already have a lot of ideas, and you think they are all quintessential for your app’s success.
From our experience, they are rarely as important as you might think, and they need to be prioritized. Many clients that, over the years, came to mReady, had long feature lists, detailed ideas on how they would work, and they were super excited for each one. Every time, we reduced the scope to below half for the MVP version, and we developed completely different features in the following versions.
Developing many features requires lots of effort, energy and money and brings no guarantees of success. So why would you want to risk so much?
In this chapter, our aim is to clarify how the MVP looks like, what the Good to Have and Nice to Have features of your app are. At the end of this chapter, you should have a clear vision of how the initial 2 releases of your app will look like.
Tip: The Pareto Principle
Make a list of all the features you have in mind and score them from 1 to 10 in terms of effort and impact. Always have in mind those that get the highest impact with the lowest effort.
3.1. The Minimum Viable Product (Must Have Features)
The Minimum Viable Product represents the minimum set of features you need to develop to implement Your Solution to The Problem. That’s it. Don’t add any cool animations or graphics, don’t add too many custom flows, and don’t try to accommodate everyone’s needs and desires. Because you can’t.
No matter if you’re a startup or a corporate enterprise, stay loyal to your Target Profile, solve their problem, set up the User Funnel Strategy you defined, and launch your product as fast as possible. You will be surprised how much feedback you will get along the way from users and how many improvements you discover after they start using your app and provide feedback.
Every feature we deprioritized from our client’s MVP scope never got reprioritized because it no longer made sense. Why would you want to waste valuable resources instead of thoroughly defining the features for your V1?
If this is not your first rodeo and have already tested the market or have an existing app (or web app), you already know your users very well. In cases like these, you can include more features and focus better on polishing the graphics of the app, as you have already achieved market-solution fit and you have a clear strategy for your customers. If this is you, the following sections of this chapter are intended to help you clarify and prioritize the business scenarios and features you need to develop.
3.2. Good to Have Features
Once we’ve taken off the table the mandatory features of the app, we can focus and prioritize the ones you believe can have significant impact on the product’s results.
What are the features you think will significantly help the app reach its goals faster?
Make a list and clearly describe how they will impact your app’s objectives and performance. The more details you put in, the more clearly you will understand the dynamics and implications of each feature.
Generally, Good to Have Features tend to offer additional value to the Profile Target and might help you reach monetary, acquisition, activation, engagement, retention, or conversion objectives. They are features that, although they are not described in the mechanics of the User Funnel Strategy, have a high chance of increasing its performance.
3.3. Nice to Have Features
What features would bring improvements to the overall experience within the app?
3.4. The Decision: V1 & V2
Congratulations for all the efforts put in so far! You are a few steps closer to launching an app destined for success!
We’ve now come to the point where we start throwing away most of the great ideas you’ve come up with so far.
Wait… What? You’ve read correctly 🙂 Each feature you plan to build in your app will cost you time, energy, and money. You need to be as cold and calculated as possible before moving to Step 4: Building the Solutionand choose wisely the worthiness of each feature.
Consider that changing your mind and going back along the way might be more expensive than falling through with the roadmap you planned.
Within each of the above categories, go through each feature and evaluate them using the Pareto Rule. Read again all the details. Do they still make sense? Are they worth the investment (or any kind of investment)? What is your Return on Investment for each one?
I know how hard it is for you to take such drastic decisions. After putting in all the time to define the features, you must choose the ones that bring measurable and clear results, even if they are not the coolest or smartest of ideas. Trust me, having this cold-hearted approach will help you save resources further and will help you invest more wisely when creating features.After you’ve taken the tough decisions, break down the features into 2 categories: V1 and V2. It’s too early to predict what your V3 will look like. Defining the V2 after your first launch will be too late.
If you are in the process of ideating or creating a mobile app you can Book a FREE Product Discovery Session here
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