Forem: Ivana Rangelova

Knowledge sharing is at the heart of CodeChem

Ivana Rangelova — Mon, 13 Sep 2021 12:38:55 +0000

Knowledge is power, but it’s far more powerful when it’s shared.

Knowledge sharing powers our company. And the success of knowledge sharing plays a key role in our company culture that we have been shaping since day one.

In fact, it’s the heart of what we do and how we maintain quality. As such, we leverage it at every opportunity.

Now, we can proudly say that we achieved that on another level.

Our colleague Lazar became an instructor and made his first course on egghead .

In this article, he shares his experience about creating this course.

What was your motive to create this course?

I’ve always wanted to pass my knowledge and experience and help developers be better at their everyday life. Also, I’ve always wanted to produce tech content. If you add the opportunity to the mix, you’ll see the full picture of my motive. This was a fun and interesting experience for me, and it helps me break the ice of course creation.

What was the process of creating this course?

Believe it or not, 80% of the time (or even more) went into planning the course, rather than producing the videos. I’ve had the opportunity to work with Lauro Silva, who's a super cool human being. He selflessly supported me during the planning and creation of this course from start to finish and I’ve learned a lot from him.

In terms of the process, I started by creating the course outline. I thought about all of the single takeaways that could be part of the course and divided them into separate lessons. That list got refined multiple times while I was creating the course. Then I wrote the outlines for each lesson. I’ve had several meetings with Lauro where we went through the course curriculum and discussed what could we change to make it better. After I nailed the curriculum, I started recording the lessons one by one and sent them to Lauro to review them. When I felt like I got the hang of it, I recorded all of the remaining lessons and submitted them in the egghead instructor’s portal. Lauro did a final review of the complete material and that was it! The course was complete!

What’s next?

I really enjoyed creating this course. It was fun, but challenging as well. It took multiple skills to produce it, like planning, writing code, designing the UI, recording, editing, and even marketing it at the end. So I’m motivated to keep creating courses. The courses don’t just help the viewers who are learning from them. They also help me have a solid understanding of the technology that I’m creating the course for. So in a way, I’m also getting better, along with the viewers. It’s a win-win situation where everyone has something to gain.

Tips:

Make sure you plan and code your lesson before recording it.
Keep your end-result code on a separate screen to remind yourself while recording.
Each lesson should have a single take-away. Don't explain multiple concepts and functionalities that are not connected.
Hit record and don't stop on your mistakes. If you make a mistake, make a pause, and continue.
Try not to move with your cursor a lot. It'll be very obvious when you cut out a segment where you make a mistake.
Write outlines for each of your lessons. The level of detail is up to you. You can do bullet points, or the whole narration word by word. Whatever works best for you.
Never forget to do a recap at the end. Recaps solidify the viewer's knowledge. Include the Recap in your outline so you won't forget it.

How to protect your eyes as a developer 👀

Ivana Rangelova — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 10:33:35 +0000

Eye health isn’t always the top priority when it comes to self-care, right?

The first thing when you wake up is checking emails on a phone or scrolling Product Hunt. Throughout the day you read and write code on the screen with a dark background and a bright multi-colored font, or a light background with darker font. At night after hard work, you watching TV.

That means your eyes are constantly are under a lot of strain and even lead to a host of eye-related symptoms, such as:

Tired eyes
Blurry vision
Dry eyes
Headaches
Red eyes

Luckily, there are a few simple things you can do to look after your most widely used sensory organ and keep it in top shape for your coding.

Try 20-20-20 rule

When you are looking at objects at a close distance, your screen in this case, tiny muscles inside your eyes called the ciliary muscles - contract. And by focusing, the contraction changes the shape of the lenses inside the eyes. While focusing, the eyes start to struggle. They especially struggle when you read your code on the screen.

Try the 20-20-20 rule. All you need to do is after 20 minutes of coding, distance yourself from the screen and start looking at least 20 seconds in cool-toned objects at least 20 feet away.

By moving your focus to a distanced object, you're letting your eyes relax.

Think blinking

Blinking is important! The eyelids work like windshield wipers.

The solution is simple. Take time to look away from your screen and start with slow blinks, as if you're falling asleep. This may seem like a no-big-deal, but did you know that your natural blinking rate of 18 to 20 times a minute decreases significantly when you’re sitting in front of a screen? The upper eyelid of the eye doesn't contact the lower eyelid, which means that only part of our cornea gets moistened. This is a hard one to prevent, but taking time to blink helps wet your eyes to prevent them from drying and getting tired, which also stops the blurred vision.

This is another way and a great habit to protect your eyes.

Check your lighting

The workplace needs to be lighter than your computer screen.

A well lead workspace is important for your mood as well. Try to work in natural light as much as possible. Ideally, the window should be on your side instead of directly in front or behind you. By using blinds you will reduce glare. But, in case you’re using artificial light, position the screen to reduce reflections. Also, you can try out different types and colors of bulbs to see what suits your eyes best.

Invest in a good monitor

It's a fact that our eyes are not big fans of flickering, glare, and low resolution. A great option for your eyes is an OLED panel. Because it has vibrant colors, angles with wide viewing, and emits significantly less blue light than an LCD panel.

Another great option is a screen with a refresh rate of at least 75 Hz. It has a much smoother viewing experience and is easier for the eyes. Even better if the screen is anti-reflective and anti-glare.

Reduce blue light at night

Blue light isn't always bad for you and your eyes. It boosts your attention and mood while you are programming during the day. But during the night, blue light can suppress the secretion of the hormone melatonin, who helps control your sleep cycle. Any type of light can do this, but blue light is most powerful.

In that case, it's a good idea to install software that controls the color temperature or filtrates the blue light. Macs already have a pre-install feature called "night shift". You can configure it to turn on automatically.

Drink more water

You need to stay hydrated throughout the day by drinking water.

Do you remember that scratching sensation when you blink like there is something in your eye? That is when the body is dehydrated. There is not enough water to remain hydrated. That results in drying your eyes and they become itchy and scratchy.

Let's recap. if you want to protect your eyes as a developer, try to acquire these 3 habits:

Look at something far away periodically;
Blink slow every once in a while;
Drink more water.

Also,

Invest in a good monitor;
Reduce blue light at night.

Prototype vs Minimum viable product

Ivana Rangelova — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 13:23:34 +0000

A prototype or an MVP: What should the first version of your product be? What’s the difference between the two? What are they used for?

Keep reading for the answers. Today we're going to talk about these 3 topics. Let's start.

Prototype vs MVP: Short Definition

Let's say that prototypes are often confused with MVPs because of their same purpose. Both are designed to help validate your idea. But how they are approached is fundamentally different. With the following 3 basic definitions, we will make it easier for you to understand the difference between a prototype and a minimum viable product (MVP):

Prototypes are created before an MVP.
A prototype is an interactive, working visualization, in another word, simulation of the product, meant to identify usability flaws that can affect user experience.
A minimum viable product is an early version of your product but with core and functional features, meant to collect people's feedback.

We already wrote an article on how to build an MVP.

Prototype

The prototype actually is a sample of what will become your final product.

A beauty in prototypes is that they are non-committal and can be used in every stage of the process. Also, they can be animated and easily sharable with friends, teams, and potential investors. Whether it’s about embodying an idea or testing a specific feature, prototyping is a powerful way to explore concepts, understand usability and improve functionality.

In this experimental process, the dev team implements ideas from paper to digital.
The prototype can come in a thousand shapes and sizes from paper prototypes and sketches to functional interactive prototypes. There is an abundance of tools, but in our process, we use Figma.

✋ 5 Advantages of Prototyping

You can attract investors. With prototyping your initial product you can get investors to consider and invest in your startup.
You can optimize resources. With creating a prototype, you can identify flaws of the design (like UI elements) and be fixed before the development begins.
Iterate designs. Tools like Figma help the team create many design iterations in a short time. This can last until you can choose the design with the best performance and make some internal experiments.
You can collect feedback. Prototyping is the best way to test users for initial feedback. User testing is an important component in this phase. It can help improve and shape the design and still have enough time to fix the flaws.
You can polish your idea. By creating a prototype, you can simplify and transform your idea into a visually appealing and refined format.

Minimum viable product (MVP)

In the minimum viable product approach, the word minimum is important here. There is nothing irrelevant in an MVP. Focused on one or few core features, a minimum viable product can be used, tested, and played with. No need to ask your test users theoretical questions, you’re only observing their behavior and collecting specific feedback of a practical nature. Okay, let’s be more clear here… an MVP is not just the functioning early release version of your final product with core features. A minimum viable product on the other hand is an experiment, testing part of your solution with the users who are experiencing the problem. And, the resulting data helps you produce a better, more marketable version of your final product.

✋ 5 Advantages of MVP

You can attract investors. By creating a prototype you can provide seed funding for your startup... But if your MVP intrigues people with a positive reaction, it can help you gain a much bigger investment!
Save you time and resources – We already said that there's no need to implement all of the features in your MVP. That means the development work is reduced and the risk of over-building features is minimized.
Helps you a better understanding of the ‘problem’.
Confirm and engage with your users – You’re not just testing the product, you’re also testing and identified the people who really need your product. You’re also putting the word out on the upcoming product, creating interest, raising awareness, a buzz...
You let the money in. With an MVP out in the market and good marketing, you can start acquiring paying users that will support your growth.

Let’s not forget the dev team. Launching an MVP is motivational: there’s a tangible representation of the future product; an MVP means progress.

In a nutshell

The differences between an MVP and a prototype.

So, which one is better for the first version of your product: MVP or prototype?

There is no winner! Which approach is better depends on the stage of the product you’re building, its scope, and intended users, but one thing is sure that for validating your initial idea, either a prototype or an MVP will be sufficient. Both prototypes and MVPs can be used to reduce risk, reduce costs, so there’s no need to invest in a huge, complex platform without going first through one of those (or both) stages.
When our team is working on a proposal, they always choose the solution that best fits the client's needs, budget, and business goals.

If you want to test the basic product concept and you have a limited budget, create a prototype.
If you want to test if the users really want a specific feature, build an MVP.

If you’re not sure which approach would fit best for your product, our dev team is always happy to talk and help you with your challenge, so feel free to contact us as well!

COMING UP NEXT:

How to hire a dedicated development team for your Startup.

3 methods that will help prioritize your MVP's features

Ivana Rangelova — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 15:04:53 +0000

When you’re in that stage of building your product, you may find yourself falling into one of the traps, such as: One-more-Feature.

You want nothing but to be perfect, and you’re thinking of all the cool features that would help to achieve this perfection, and so the list keeps growing and growing...
You know what they say:

When everything is important, nothing is important.

If you elicit a long list with dozens of wants features: from small to large, from simple to complex, from usual to unique, how can you know where to start? How do you filter all of the features and assemble the minimum, enough to verify your idea?

There are features that are certain must-haves but there are some that will be totally pointless. And prioritizing the features for your minimum viable product is the key to escape from the chaos in your head. 🗝️

Feature prioritization for your minimum viable product is the most important decision you will make in the development process. So, in this article, we will explain how to achieve this.

How to pick your MVP features

Choosing the right features for your MVP can't be impulsive and intuitive, but precisely defined. We know that this process can be tricky but fun and it's totally worth it. While you may think that you have sorted all things, detailing it actually takes a lot of work and effort, such as discussions with developers and experts.

After you figure out the problem your product is solving and who your target will be, it’s time to analyze your competitors and what your potential users like in their products. See what functionality the competition is offering and what users might feel is missing in their product. Don’t skip the market research! This will help you with your further development, and result in a long list of desired features.

Design Sprint is a fantastic way to point a problem and gain people's feedback on a solution to that problem. In a 5-day workshop, a team with experts explores a problem, simulate design thinking, creates a prototype, and gains feedback from users on that prototype. This fun and magical whirlwind process help you uncover new solutions and open new horizons for your product.

Post-Sprint the teams can be left with a long list of features. But luckily you’ve been armed with valuable information which helps you much easier to plan the entire process.

Product feature prioritization methods

Wants vs. Needs

For this method, you need a crystal clear picture between what the user wants and what the user needs. We are already said that user experience and feedback are very important for your MVP. Sometimes you may find in the scenario where early adopters prefer cool and unique functionalities, but in reality, that is not vital for the product at an early stage. Of course, you can keep and implement them for version 2.0 or for further development. By avoiding implementing too many non-essential features too soon you are making a very smart move. This will save you valuable time and money. Otherwise, you will be forced to sacrifice the needed features. That is going to result in harming your MVP and lead you astray from its overall purpose of product validation.

Feature Buckets

Suggested by many famous project managers and product owners, this product development method is the most usual and quickest way of validating features.
For prioritizing into feature buckets you split the list of features into 3 groups, sometimes 4 or 5.

Must have (Metric Movers). These features are intended to positively affect the main KPIs of the product. The success or failure of your product will be judged by the KPIs, so this bucket is essential in the interest of reaching product goals.
Nice to have (Delights). Features that increase people's satisfaction, such as attractive and cool animations, leaderboards, entertaining elements, etc.
Not needed (User requests). These features are actively requested by users, but are not intended to solve their principal problem. They are minor and attractive features, such as unique and funny sticker packs or emojis.

It's a very rare scenario, but don't get confused as some features may fall into 3 buckets. But, evade it where one of the buckets has no features in it. This likely illustrates the issue with your innovative ability, product performance, or the gathering and interpretation of user feedback.
These issues can cause both short-term and long-term problems, and threaten the project's success. A balanced approach would result in an MVP with features from all buckets.

MoSCow Matrix

This is another prioritization method used in agile product development and involves splitting all features into 4 logical categories:

(M) Must Have are features that are very essential for building your MVP. Without these features, the product may face some legal or regulatory challenges. Also, intended to give the product its fundamental value to users.
(S) Should Have features are second to 'must-haves' in the order of importance. Тhey brings great value from the user experience aspect. And their absence won't have a high impact on your MVP.
(C) Could Have features are the cute little add-ons. But no matter how exciting, attractive, and interesting they are, don’t rush to include them in the early product version.
(W) Won’t Have are the features that you’re absolutely sure you won’t implement in your MVP, but in the final version of your product.
(C) Could Have features are the cute little add-ons. But no matter how exciting, attractive, and interesting they are, don’t rush to include them in the early product version.
(W) Won’t Have are the features that you’re absolutely sure you won’t implement in your MVP, but in the final version of your product.

Different methods have different approaches and involve differing perspectives. Deciding what method to use and conducting it yourself could be overwhelming, which is where product development companies like CodeChem are more than happy to jump in and assist.

COMING UP NEXT:

The differences between a prototype and an MVP.

Stay tuned.

4 popular types of MVP: How to choose the right one for your startup

Ivana Rangelova — Tue, 27 Jul 2021 12:41:29 +0000

In our latest blog post, we've discussed what a Minimal Viable Product is. It's the easiest tool you can build in order to test your idea and learn through collecting feedback from your early adopters. And also, how to build it.

It's a fact that in this dynamic and turbulent world, full of brilliant ideas ready to be born into great startups, every entrepreneur is facing the same challenge - a blank page! That is one of the main reasons why many startups are failing. The blank page has endless possibilities and no guidelines. And the absence of form scares off potential entrepreneurs before they start. The absence of form exists because of the lack of feedback, so entrepreneurs don't know whether they are making the right decisions.

Successful entrepreneurs see the blank page differently. They will shape a blank page into many ideas, then a plan, and at the end a product. They will transform the page to a process that will allow for that evolution to occur. Successful entrepreneurs don’t rely on the intuition of what users want, instead, they learn it through a process of hypothesis and experimentation. They discover the best decisions for their business by building an MVP.

MVP can come in a thousand shapes and forms. So, in this article, we will focus on the most popular ones. We will give you a simple explanation and examples from successful startups. We're sure that it will help you decide which type or solution is most suitable!

Content-related MVP

This group of MVPs is based on content. It will allow you to present the idea behind your product to your potential users or investors without building a prototype.

And now you probably have a question: ‘Isn't MVP first and foremost a product?’ Yes! But, it’s possible to catch potential leads and measure purchase intent without building it.

A landing page is the most used form of MVP because is easy to make. A simple website, a short description of your product, and a CTA (call to action) button can be a very reliable test of people’s interest. For a quick result – you can run an AdWords campaign on your main keywords and see people's reactions.

Main tips:

✔︎ Make it look aesthetically appealing, so you can grab people’s attention!

✔︎ Try to explain all the features from the user’s perspective.

✔︎ Ask people to leave their e-mails. Once the MVP is live, you’ll be able to inform early adopters about your product.

Example: Buffer.com

One of the most popular platforms for scheduling social media posts was tested through various landing pages before the first line of its code was written. Joel Gascoigne, the founder, build a simple website describing Buffer’s functionalities and a page with “Plans & Pricing”. Everyone who clicked on could be a potential subscriber. Most importantly, the product wasn’t ready yet. The page only contained a piece of information that it will be launched soon and a possibility of signing up for a newsletter. Very easy and effective!

🤩 Pros

Can be built cheaply and quickly.
Can easily be matched with online ads.
Can be tested and optimized easily.

😩 Cons

The conversion rate is low (about 1-3% of people sign up).
Hard to adapt all vital information into one page.
A landing page that's not aesthetic can hurt your brand.

This type of MVP is another popular content-related MVP. One minute-long video is more than enough to explain your product. An interesting and creative video catches people's attention more easily than a simple description. Also, can go viral very quickly.

Example: dropbox.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4eTR7tci6A

DropBox (a platform for sharing files on different devices) proved the effectiveness of their MVP in the form of a video. Because of the complexity of their innovative product, they test it before investing resources for development. DropBox created a short animated video for their MVP. The subscriptions sky-rocketed overnight!

🤩 Pros

Explains your product in a simple way.
People are interested in watching a short video.
Good for branding.

😩 Cons

You may have to spend a lot of time to make an explainer video and get the right message.

Functionality-related MVP

This type of MVP is based on functionality. Can be used when content-related MVP wouldn’t give you enough feedback from your early adopters.

Wizard of Oz MVP is where you essentially put up a front that gives your early adopters the impression that you have a product. Also, users have the opportunity to experience it. It’s a very effective way of checking if you have a wanted product before you actually build it.

Example: zappos.com

Zappos (an online shoe retailer) is the most famous example of Wizard of Oz MVP. Nick, the founder tested the idea before creating the product. He went to local stores, photographed shoes, and sell them online. All that he needed was a very simple website and a small budget for ads to get traffic. From the customer’s side, it looked like a fully functional website.

🤩 Pros

You can set up this MVP cheaply and quickly.
You can use social media to generate interest.

😩 Cons

You have to spend a lot of time and effort to manually perform the service.
Customers can feel cheated if they come to know that there is no real product.

Single Feature MVP is when you develop your actual product and sell it to your potential users. Even though the term means developing 'one single’ feature for the MVP, it doesn’t necessarily mean that. Single Feature MVPs are those that focus on solving the core problem of the user. And to do so, you may need more features in your minimum viable product, but they must be prioritized. Keep ‘must-have’ features and eliminate ‘nice to have’. While defining and prioritizing the core features to build, consider the following things: Unique Selling Point that offers users value and stand among the competition. Leave the other features for later development.

Example: spotify.com

Spotify today is the global leader in the music industry. But how it reached the top of success is an interesting story.

In 2008 Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon identified the opportunity that the music industry had nothing to help the music lovers stream songs. In 2006 after just 4 months of development, they launched their first prototype.

🤩 Pros

Focused on solving one specific problem for specific users.
You can get your product to market fast with low costs.
You can expand it later without much difficulty.

😩 Cons

You have to invest in development.
You may have a problem figuring out which feature you should focus on.

Before choosing the right type of MVP for your startup, you should define your goal. Understand your target, estimate the resources, choose the most suitable type MVP for your startup, and get ready to beat the market. As a software development company, we are always here to help you make the right decision and turn your ideas into a successful startup! ★

NEXT STEP ⇢

In this post, we went through what are the most popular types of MVP. In the following post, we will explain how to define and prioritize the features for your MVP. Stay tuned.

FFMPEG: Screen-recording and video compression made fast and easy (MacOSX guide)

Ivana Rangelova — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 20:47:27 +0000

Intro

You probably already know the "Why" since you're here, or probably you're just a knowledge devourer that wants to know stuff just because one day it might come in handy (trust me, this might come in handy one day).

In your life as a developer you might need to make screen recordings to send to your colleagues or clients to showcase (the progress of) something you've developed. And these screen recordings can result in pretty big file sizes depending on the resolution and the length of the recording. Big files don't work well with slow upload speed and also they take more space on a server ("Thanks Captain Obvious!" - said someone from the audience).

So, since video compression is a thing, I'm going to help you compress those chonky files and help you decrease the effects of the aforementioned problems.

Pre-requisites

The only additional things you will need to accomplish this task are:

Homebrew - a package manager for MacOS (makes life a lot easier)
ffmpeg - a CLI tool which allows video format conversion, compression etc.
basic terminal knowledge (traversing the file system)

Installing the pre-requisites

Open a terminal window
Install Homebrew by running this:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Install ffmpeg by running this:

brew install ffmpeg

Screen-recording tutorial

Recording your screen on MacOSX is as easy as pressing Cmd + Shift + 5. I won't explain further, the tool is quite intuitive, fiddle around with it and you'll get familiar with it quite fast.

NOTE: To make your life easier rename your recording to something short and simple like "a.mov".

Video compression tutorial

Open a terminal window
Go to the recording's location (using the terminal of course)
Run:

ffmpeg -i {recording-video} -vcodec libx264 -crf 24 {output-video}

The {recording-video} and the {output-video} have to contain the file extension as well.
(i.e.: ffmpeg -i a.mov -vcodec libx264 -crf 24 b.mov)

And that's about it. If you want to know more about what the options for ffmpeg mean, keep on reading.

Breaking down the `ffmpeg` command

Let's dissect the command first:

ffmpeg | -i {recording-video} | -vcodec libx264 | -crf 24 | {output-video}

Now let's explain it:

ffmpeg is the name of the CLI tool
-i is an option which takes the name of the input video (the video which we want to work on)
-vcodec is an option which takes the video codec's name (in our case it's libx264)
-crf is an option which determines the constant rate factor (I know it's wrong, but I remember this as compression ratio factor, which makes it easier for me to remember that higher values mean higher compression and lower video quality/size)

Outro

I hope this post helped you learn something new. This may serve as a short introduction to ffmpeg for you as well, which is a powerful CLI tool. You can learn more about ffmpeg here.

Also, I've made a multi-platform tool which installs everything automatically. You can look at it here.

Тips for building successful MVP in 3 months 🚀

Ivana Rangelova — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 14:01:23 +0000

The year was 2007. There were two guys who just moved to San Francisco. Both were unemployed, so they faced the trouble of paying rent. Suddenly, they realized that all the hotel rooms in San Francisco were reserved because the local industrial design conference at the time attracted a large number of visitors.

And this is how it all started...

A minimum viable product was born.

They came up with the idea of providing accommodation for people coming to town. They took a few pictures of their apartment, launched a basic website, and promoted it to people who were coming to San Francisco for a design conference.

And this is how Brian and Joe built AirBnB!

Brian and Joe's concept is what we call an MVP Development nowadays.

WHAT IS AN MVP?

MVP is a version of your product you want to launch with minimal and functional features. Besides that, those futures should also cover 3 other areas:

Reliability = no bugs, no crashes, no disappointment.

Usability = simple UI and legibility.

User Experience = unique, lovable, friendly, and usable.

This MVP Pyramid Model from Jussi Pasanen perfectly illustrates the issue:
"Build a slice across, instead of one layer at a time".

Be sure that less functionality doesn't mean poor quality. In fact, in a competitive digital world, the product you build to achieve user traction needs to be more than just a few lines of code well kept into a repository. It needs to fit into the everyday environment, create emotion, solve real problems, and tell a story while it does all that.

By going with an MVP first, you can drastically increase your chances of success. It allows you to fit into the market in a short time with a small budget and satisfy early adopters.

It is very important to note that an MVP is a process of collecting feedback. It’s not a finished product.
In other words, once the minimum viable product is launched, you await valuable feedback for future product developments. Тhat will allow you to continue improving and developing your MVP. One day, your MVP will become a fully-fledged product.

One of the places for collecting feedback for your MVPs is the place where early adopters like to spend their free time — on ProductHunt.

We all know that launching a new product is a complex process and can be tricky, especially for startups. Most failures happen in a scenario where there is no research on the needs and limits of the market, adequate cash flow, or if the product is not user-friendly.

Now that we’ve established what an MVP is, let’s figure out how to build an MVP right.
So, you should follow these 5 steps:

Analyze the market and your competitors,
Figure out what problem you’re solving, and for whom,
List all necessary features and prioritize them,
Develop your MVP,
Launch! 🚀

Step 1. Analyze the market and your competitors

It may happen that the idea doesn't fit the needs of the market. Before you start building an MVP, make sure it fulfills the needs of your target users. Cover the most suitable market for the start. In our experience, it is not optimal to spend most of the resources only on market research especially if it is a new product. If there is already a product similar to the one you want to launch on the market, it is important to do a competitor analysis. It'll help you make your product more unique. You can be inspired by the competition and tweak the product in order to gain a competitive advantage.

Another crucial step before you start building the MVP is to get early feedback from experts. They can give you valuable and wise advice and guide you along the way to completing your future MVP!

Step 2. Figure out what problem you’re solving, and for whom:

The first thing of successful MVP development is validating your idea. Start by asking yourself:

Who will use my product?
What value (time, money) does my product offer?
What problem do I solve?
What is the core functionality?
What determinates success and failure?
When can I deliver it?
When and how much revenue will it bring?

Step 3. List all necessary features and prioritize them

Don't forget that the MVP must be low-cost, practical, and delivered in the short time scope previously defined. As soon as you’ve defined all the steps, you can start creating a list of particular features for each stage. Then, you need to prioritize them. For better understanding, we can define a user flow for our core features. One of the most important questions is what will make your users intrigued and happy to see.

The core features of your product,
The should-have features,
The nice-to-have features.

When you’ve prioritized all the features, you may define their scope for the first version of the product and start to build the MVP. By creating a prototype you can have a better grasp of how your future product would look like.

Consider prototyping as an MVP to build an MVP: not a fully functional version, but a version to help visualize the look and feel of the product. In our experience, an iterative approach would be the best solution to move forward to our common goal, which is the MVP itself.

Step 4. Develop your MVP (Coding Time)

Since you researched, deliberated, and made many hard decisions, it’s finally time to translate theory into practice! You assemble a team to do the UX, UI, Code, DevOps, and Tests.

Keep in mind that an MVP is a product that is born based on PROCESS. And that process requires experience. You should develop the MVP with speed and precision. It's advisable to have a team of agile software developers who have expertise in specific technologies, implementation, and testing that in the end will save you resources and successfully reach the goal (MVP).

Step 5. Launch! 🚀

Finally, it’s time to get your product out in the world. That means you allow the early adopters to try your product. You need to pay attention to the feedback from them, as this will be the cornerstone for further development.

There are several approaches to go-to-market strategy of an MVP launch.

Soft launch

The soft launch requires releasing to a limited half of the target audience. The main idea of soft product launching is to reduce risks with product release. It is based on a few key points:

Receive the users’ feedback. Collecting users' opinions helps to improve the usability and user journey. It also allows prioritizing features for the further development.
Understand the user willingness to pay.
Test the monetization options.

Hard launch

Hard launch is not the best option for launching your MVP. It's applicable to the mature products because the release is with huge marketing activities.
The hard launch is a good option if:

You have strong infrastructure.
You have a large and predictable audience.
You can successfully anticipate the market reaction.

Dark launch

The dark launch is based on the process of continuous delivery. In other words, it’s a regular feature update of your MVP.
This approach allows you to track the user behavior in real-time. It’s a perfect way to decide, whether a new update is efficient enough to scale to all users.

Because at the end of the day, a successful product is always a result of planning and thorough analysis.

So, is it possible to build an MVP in 3 months? 🚀

It sure is! MVP in itself is considered to be a time-efficient solution for a number of reasons, including the focus only on the essential features and the opportunity to initiate the feedback loop early on. In some cases, the development may be restricted to a month or two – from our own experience, however, three months is the optimal timeframe for building your application just enough for your users to get a feel of what it's all about.

You might be very excited when coming up with an idea for software that can change people’s lives and make it easier and entertaining. At CodeChem, we also get excited when we get to take part in creating something unique, lovable, friendly, and useful. Let’s combine your ideas with our capabilities and expertise to develop an awesome product. If you’re ready, check out our process and drop us a line.

https://codechem.com/mvp

Forem: Ivana Rangelova

Knowledge sharing is at the heart of CodeChem

What was your motive to create this course?

What was the process of creating this course?

What’s next?

Tips:

How to protect your eyes as a developer 👀

Try 20-20-20 rule

Think blinking

Check your lighting

Invest in a good monitor

Reduce blue light at night

Drink more water

Prototype vs Minimum viable product

A prototype or an MVP: What should the first version of your product be? What’s the difference between the two? What are they used for?

Prototype vs MVP: Short Definition

Prototype

Minimum viable product (MVP)

In a nutshell

The differences between an MVP and a prototype.

So, which one is better for the first version of your product: MVP or prototype?

COMING UP NEXT:

3 methods that will help prioritize your MVP's features

How to pick your MVP features

Product feature prioritization methods

COMING UP NEXT:

4 popular types of MVP: How to choose the right one for your startup

NEXT STEP ⇢

FFMPEG: Screen-recording and video compression made fast and easy (MacOSX guide)

Intro

Pre-requisites

Installing the pre-requisites

Screen-recording tutorial

Video compression tutorial

Breaking down the ffmpeg command

Outro

Тips for building successful MVP in 3 months 🚀

WHAT IS AN MVP?

Step 1. Analyze the market and your competitors

Step 2. Figure out what problem you’re solving, and for whom:

Step 3. List all necessary features and prioritize them

Step 4. Develop your MVP (Coding Time)

Step 5. Launch! 🚀

Soft launch

Hard launch

Dark launch

So, is it possible to build an MVP in 3 months? 🚀

Breaking down the `ffmpeg` command