MVP Testing: How Does It Make a Difference?

You have an idea that you think can enhance some people’s lives, and you’ve determined to turn it into reality. Sometimes, however, assumptions don’t match existing market requirements. So how can one predict if people will be involved in a new product? There is a way: to research the target audience completely and test your idea through MVP. 

A minimum viable product, that’s what the abbreviation stands for, assists to know the actual demand. Therefore, it limits investing time and money into action without a strong product/market fit. In this article, we will tell you a little about MVP, its benefits for a startup, and specific QA services that will serve an MVP.

What Is a Minimum Viable Product?

An MVP is a “proof of concept” version of a new product. As a rule, it offers the basic functionality that will build the core of the product and be important for potential users. The idea of an MVP is to create user feedback and show whether the product will be in demand. 

The Advantages of MVP Tests

When speaking about MVP testing approaches, people can mean testing from the marketing aspect of QA activities. Let’s begin with the latter and the advantages it brings. 

Minimum Viable Product Testing: Marketing Perspective

When we talk about the marketing aspect, authors of the idea and investors are the first to come to understanding.  Here are some advantages they will get:

• Proof of the concept validity. You can get feedback from potential users and understand whether they are interested in the product at the primary stages.
• Cost-efficiency. MVP needs  considerably lower investments associated to a full-scale product. Thus, creators can examine the viability of their idea with minimum expenses.
• Time-efficiency. It takes less time to generate an MVP product. Therefore, you will receive the feedback early.

Starting a product with an MVP also helps to boost developers’ efficiency, in particular,

1. It takes less time to build a product.
2. Bug fixes are quick thanks to having basic functionality only.
3. There is a solid background for executing new features.
4. The team can imagine thoroughly about product architecture.

As for the customers, access to the primary version of a product gives them an opportunity to change the development process. There are many enthusiasts who will happily accept an offer to engage in something like this. That leads us to the next point: QA activities and software testing.

Minimum Viable Product Testing: QA Perspective

To win users’ attention, interest, and support, you will require to offer them a decent product from the very start. It should be easy to use and with the least defects. While these two things are more or less clear, some don’t completely understand what exactly to concentrate on when developing an MVP. 

While you build a product for the purpose of functionality, the features aren’t the only significant aspect. It is necessary to ensure that the product is reliable and usable. You cannot ignore emotional design either. Instead of spending on the functionality only, present the core characteristics but in an appealing way. Users will appreciate this choice more than rich functionality that requires intuitiveness or has many bugs. Proper QA expertise will help to accomplish this.

Remember that quality assurance is more than simply testing. For example, you can engage a BA specialist to guide you on what to include in the primary version of the product and help to build the strategy for further development.

Software Testing for MVP: What to Check?

As you’ve already learned, an MVP is not just a mockup. It has to be functional and work well. Therefore, it is best to trust testing professionals. It may be foolish to hire in-house QA engineers right away. In this case, you can employ an outsourced testing company. 

As for the kinds of testing, an accurate list will differ depending on the product. Here’s an approximate list of the needed QA activities:

• Unit tests. This is a job for a development team, so you will be ready to reach it with internal resources. Unit tests help to discover defects in the tiniest pieces of code so that defects don’t pile up in the future
• Smoke tests. This set of activities helps to ensure that the core functionality serves, and users can access an MVP. In other terms, a QA team is to verify whether a user can install software, generate an account, log in, etc.
• Functional tests. QA engineers are to check that an MVP features as supposed and defined in the documentation. Of course, the conditions may change after the MVP stage. But for now, it is necessary to adjust the actual functionality with the idea.
• UI (user interface) tests. Another phase that grabs users’ attention from the very beginning is product design. Therefore, a team reviews visual layout, consistency, and checks the right functioning of the graphical elements.
• UX tests. It may be sensible to give attention to usability and emotional design. The latter may not be the result of the greatest preference, they may be a significant bonus for users.
• User acceptance tests (UAT). It is the ultimate step before MVP release. The goal of UAT is to validate end-to-end business flow and ensure the team can hand the product over to stakeholders and users.

As you can see, the list of the fundamental testing activities doesn’t get very hard at this stage. The team will probably require to run regression tests, too. It helps to check that changes in the last build haven’t altered the overall functionality that has been working perfectly. 

As for the test automation services that can be a game-changer for a startup, an MVP doesn’t require those. There is a high probability that conditions will change in the future. Hence, there is no requirement to invest in automated testing this early. 

Also Read: Managing The Obscure Boundaries Among Development, QA, And DevOps

To Sum Up

An MVP often becomes the foundation for the future agreement between an idea, investors, and users. Learning how a product resonates with true users comes with important insights that help to define the direction for further development. Then why is a quality necessary for a product that may not also continue its existence? It is pretty easy: quality provides you an advantage from the very start. Without having a stable, practical, and visually appealing MVP, you may not be able to get those insights because there would be too many people eager to practice a poorly designed product. So don’t rush to release software without testing it accurately, even if it is just a minimum viable product. 

If you are ready to discuss an MVP testing plan, feel free to contact us. At TestUnity, we strive for the highest quality in every project, and our professional QA specialists are ready to ensure it. Contact us if you’re looking for a dedicated team to enhance your product’s quality.

TestUnity

Testunity is a SaaS-based technology platform driven by a vast community of testers & QAs spread around the world, powered by technology & testing experts to create the dedicated testing hub. Which is capable of providing almost all kind of testing services for almost all the platforms exists in software word.