4 MVP Design Challenges a Business Analyst Needs to Solve

When developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), both the solution (what the user needs) and the problem (what the product should do) are unknown. Getting these things right requires a process that combines hypothesis tests and experiments with data gathering and feedback to identify the user's problem. As part of the process, prototypes and multiple product versions are developed and user feedback is collected and incorporated into successive versions.

That is where business analysts come into the picture. We spoke to Carlos Cardona, Senior Business Analyst at EPAM, who shares his personal experience of tackling MVP design challenges that he faced as a business analyst on one of his past projects. These are the four challenges that Carlos had to solve during MVP implementation.

What does an MVP stand for?

A minimum viable product (MVP) is a version of a product that allows the team to obtain as much validated information about users as possible with the least amount of effort. This process allows for rapid quantitative and qualitative analysis of the market response to a particular product or feature.

The ultimate goal of an MVP is to avoid developing products that users won't find valuable and to maximize the amount of user information obtained using limited resources.

Despite its name, an MVP is much more than just a product. An MVP is a continuous process of generating ideas, developing and presenting prototypes and collecting, analyzing and learning from data. It also requires customer interaction, defining metrics and analyzing results. If you want to build something quickly, you probably don’t need an MVP.

How a business analyst can address MVP design challenges

As IT consultants, business analysts have expertise in both business and technology. This combination of skills helps organizations achieve their goals by translating business needs into clearly defined requirements. This is my take on how a business analyst can apply these skills to address MVP design challenges specifically, with examples from my past project.

Challenge #1. Understanding the business domain

The first challenge I faced was to understand the business domain. I was dealing with an industry that was new to me, with its own business rules and objectives. I gradually began participating in meetings with the client to understand their needs and to gather information about business processes and the relevant technical documentation.

I felt I needed to dive deeper and study the overall business domain. I did this by:

• Identifying subjects, their characteristics and the relationships between them
  
• Learning terminology specific to the business domain
  
• Identifying objects, their characteristics and relationships with the subjects
  
• Detailing business processes and how they relate to objects and subjects
  

Challenge #2. Defining the MVP roadmap

The second challenge I faced was participating in the definition of the MVP roadmap and the prioritization of features. This was something new for me since I couldn’t yet be certain which activities and tools would help us achieve our purpose. With the help of the technology provider that participated in the construction of the MVP, we completed three activities that helped us determine the critical functionalities that we wanted to include in the MVP:

• Product vision definition. We used the Product Vision Board (PVB), a popular visual tool that presents goals comprehensively while answering key questions.
  
• User personas definition. User personas are fictitious representations of a product or service user. They help the team understand the users’ motivations, behaviors, frustrations, pains and needs.
  
• Story mapping. Jeff Patton developed this technique to identify a series of essential functionalities that ensure the product fulfills its vital functions. 
  

Challenge #3. Writing user stories

Next, I had to write the user stories. This was the first time I worked according to the agile methodology. Sprint after sprint, I improved my writing so that the team understood what we should deliver and for what purpose. I always wondered: How do I get the details in the user stories right?

To improve my user story writing skills, I did the following:

• Defined and clarified system boundaries by drawing a context diagram. This helped me better understand the flow of information between the system and external sources.
  
• Identified legacy systems to be consumed and why they were required.
  
• Helped with refining requirements and analyzing their dependencies and impacts.
  
• Participated in meetings with the UX/UI design team to enhance use cases.
  
• Made a service map to identify all services to be consumed for different features.
  
• Requested technical documents (ACLs, WSDLs, response examples and error code documentation).
  
• Documented and visualized the MVP definitions that could be useful to the team but hadn’t yet been centralized.
  

Challenge #4. Dealing with PoCs

Finally, the last challenge I faced was supporting the process of creating proofs of concept (PoC).

We needed PoCs to help us choose the best third-party solution to integrate with. I needed to understand how the third-party APIs worked, how to send requests and how to interpret the responses obtained. At this stage, I also had the opportunity to use tools such as POSTMAN and SOAP UI.

An MVP can be determined by many PoCs, but they are not the same thing, even though they can be combined during product development.

A PoC is a very small internal project carried out to evaluate a future project's feasibility, scalability and profitability. It is used to verify technical concepts, such as the method to be applied, technology or integration. 

An MVP is the foundation on which PoCs work; it contains viable features and provides relevant information for future business decisions.  

To sum up, the benefits of MVPs are:

• Minimizing and optimizing costs and time
  
• Getting faster user feedback
  
• Possibly generating first users after the MVP release
  
• Attracting investor attention 

The benefits of PoCs include: 

• Attracting initial investors
  
• Saving time
  
• Assisting in the selection of the right technology
  
• Opportunity to stay one step ahead of the competition
  

I hope sharing my experience will help you on your journey. If you wish to join us at EPAM, check out our current openings. Good luck!