It made sense then because it was derived from the process followed by industries such as manufacturing and construction. But while this model was great for hardware development, software development is a completely different game and needed a fresh approach. Besides that the waterfall approach is also inherently time-intensive, which means it's at odds with today's highly competitive markets where the fast mover advantage is a key requirement for success.
The result was an evolution of the Rapid Application Development (RAD) and Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approaches for software development. At a basic level, the MVP approach is about building a product that your customers want, rather than building a product that you want to sell and then trying to convince customers why it's great.
So, an MVP only has core features that are needed for the product to be deployed, and no more. The final product is a result of an iterative process where feedback from the customers is captured and integrated back into the product. The iteration process continues either till a desirable product/market fit is obtained, or until the product is deemed to be non-viable.
But turning your ideas into an MVP quickly, by combining data, mobile and elastic infrastructure is crucial. Here are some great tips to get your MVP right:
Focus on customer experience
A great product idea, but poor user experience can mean that customers might reject your idea outright. Focus on simplified and intuitive user interfaces, understanding your customer, high level design concepts. Also always design for a seamless, multi-channel experience.
Build for the future
Ensure you use the most modern infrastructure that can integrate with multiple platforms and scale quickly and seamlessly. Align with organizational security principles while delivering unlimited scale using hybrid cloud.
Use a distributed development model and DevOps
Using a global, agile team with a disciplined core agile delivery approach with extreme programming and lean standards based practices is crucial for faster development. Using DevOps for product development and delivery can help accelerate time to market of stable builds and ship releases in weeks.
Today's rapidly evolving app development landscape is challenging. If you leverage cloud and mobile strategies, and facilitate speed and efficiency of modern application development, read more on how we redesign your product with minimal time, cost and code for a hybrid future.
