Scalability is one of the significant aspects to be considered when enterprises are looking to build their applications or products. MVP is a concept that has been popularized by the styleLean Startup. It is a model attempt to garner attention, build brand value, promote regular consumption, drive long-term demand, and eventually increase end-user engagement for the products or services.
In this blog, we’ll discuss how your MVP can be iterated to scale efficiently without incurring heavy revenue losses during the deal.
The first step: Identifying the gaps
The primary step in scaling an MVP involvesidentifying the problem areas and arriving at sustainable solutionswithout affecting the stability of the running application. Over time, when MVP draws more customers, growth becomes a balancing act of retaining existing users. Customers are offered a steady stream of improvements while scaling the business model with new audiences. However, this can increase the load on your infrastructure. It makes little sense to design a “production” version of the product from scratch to handle usage at scale. That organically leads to finding ways to address this gap.
Tapping the potential of cloud services
The biggest boon of cloud services is their ability to widen in scope for quick experimental periods. It becomes convenient to add functionality to your MVP as you receive customer feedback.Cloud serviceslessen the burden of long-term capacity planning, thereby allowing more focus on creating and improving your core features. When your app, website, or service goes viral, cloud services are equipped with large economies that can improve your margins and scale up to supplementary growth.
Factoring in the dynamic nature of your products/services
While planning your MVP, it is essential to understand both the long-term and short-term expectations from the product. It is also imperative that you define your MVP from standpoints of technology, functionality and UX design.
Keeping up to speed with the market
Speed is a critical factor for successful product implementation. In this context, it makes practical sense to consider ways to quickly expand your product’s features and functionalities without having to stop and re-architect. Managed services such as API Gateway scale up without significant architectural or operational changes.
Successful, scalable examples
Some of thecases that have scaled from an MVPto what now rules the roost of social networking apps include Instagram and Facebook. Instagram was a maiden attempt at developing an elementary model of a photo sharing app with filters and an unattractive design. Facebook didn’t come with a timeline in its first version. Therefore, with core features embedded, they scaled up both regarding design and functionality; all along generating more user engagement and bringing about sustained revenue.
Simply put, scalability is the ability of a product to adapt to fast-paced changes and heavy workloads without compromising on performance, continually sustaining and recovering revenue losses.
In the startup culture, building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is one of the most effective ways to develop successful business outcomes. However, it is essential that the MVP does not lose out on the aspect of being financially sustainable owing to its limitations on scalability.