Industry 4.0 market size is expected to grow to 165.5 billion USD by 2026 The internet of things (IoT) will play a major role in the growth story of industry 4.0. The mouth-watering potential of industry 4.0 has lured many entrepreneurs towards itself.
If you are one of those entrepreneurs, you must consider building an MVP (minimum viable product) before launching your full-fledged product.
The chances of your success diminished substantially without an MVP in this fiercely competitive market. An MVP allows you to test out the basic idea of your new product amongst the real target audience. You can then decide whether you need to continue investing time and effort into building a full-fledged product. With an MVP, you can give your audience a taste of the product before a full-fledged launch.
Then, based on their engagement and feedback, you can improve the product or choose to discard the project altogether. MVP software development is a tried and tested technique that takes the guesswork out of the equation.
This blog will look at what an MVP is, the purpose of building one and the tips to build a successful IoT MVP. Let’s begin the journey
What is an MVP???
An MVP (minimum viable product) is the most basic product version that could be used. The MVP consists only of the essential elements required for the product to function. Businesses build MVP to achieve a product-market fit in the shortest possible time.
What is the Purpose of MVP Software Development?
The following are the benefits of building an MVP:
Tips for a Successful IoT MVP Software Development
To build a successful MVP, you should balance what you plan to deliver and what your users require. The goal of the MVP product development is to test the idea with the fewest possible errors. Now let’s have a look at IoT MVP development.
Select the Right Hardware
When you look for IoT hardware, you will find that there is no shortage of IoT hardware in the market. It can be a real challenge for you to select the right boards, kits and accessories. You need to consider many factors like cost, compatibility, connectivity, size, the robustness of the hardware and processing power to select a quality IoT hardware.
Simple and low-cost boards are perfect for building an MVP IoT. But you should always ensure that the hardware you select is perfect for your requirements. An expert IoT MVP app development company can help you select the right IoT hardware.
You will require the IoT hardware to validate the ideas, shape the design and do in-house testing of your product. You could work with blank boards that require considerable effort like soldering, wiring, adding modules and adding extra processing power. Although working with blank boards is not easy, they allow you to build a custom design and go for dynamic prototyping.
There are market ready IoT boards available from companies like Raspberry Pi that have everything you need. If you want to build your MVP quickly and do not require a high level of customization, these boards can prove to be a perfect choice. These market-ready boards will help you quickly roll out a decent IoT product into the market.
Before selecting the IoT hardware, ensure that your hardware producer offers more than just boards and extensions. A wide range of tools and services like IDE and cloud platform kits should be available with IoT hardware. These tools and services will help you considerably speed up your IoT MVP development.
Build a Robust Programming Strategy
Along with decent IoT hardware, you will also need to define a robust programming strategy for your IoT hardware. If you choose to use cheaper low power devices, these run only on scripts written in low-level languages like C and C++. You will then require to hire expert programmers that can write code in these languages.
If you choose to go with more expensive and powerful IoT hardware, these devices will provide you with wider programming opportunities. You can use powerful programming languages like a python that can really speed up your IoT MVP development process. If you are going for MVP software development for startups, then it is best to go with powerful IoT hardware. As with a startup, the time-to-market is very important. At efour, we have expertise in building an MVP for startups.
The tradeoff between low-cost devices and expensive IoT hardware is between money and time. While you pay more for expensive hardware, you can save time on the development of MVP. It is not wise to always go with paying more money. You should assess your project and make the decision accordingly. You can always take the help of an expert IoT app development company that will help you choose the right programming strategy and reduce the cost of building an MVP.
Use Correct Tools
The IoT applications have specific and certain requirements with regards to design, speed and performance. The client applications need to provide access to data acquired from IoT devices. The applications also need to provide the features to analyze this data.
Plenty of solutions and platforms are available in the market that can help you build your data visualization and analytics strategy. You just need to integrate your MVP with these tools, and they will do the job for you. These tools already offer a wide range of features that your IoT application will need in the future. Understand that you might need to work on configuration and integration with these tools. By using third-party tools, you can significantly reduce the price of the IoT MVP development process.
Remain updated with the changing market environment
The dynamic nature of the market environment is one of the primary reasons why minimum viable product development is a good idea. New players emerge in the market, new trends shape the direction of the market, and even the economies transform. These are just some of the dynamics that affect the market environment.
The project, requirements and priorities can change drastically even in a short time. That’s why it is important to always remain updated with the changing market environment. This will help you achieve efficient time and budget management for your MVP. Always ensure to have rapid response and adaptation practices in place before you start MVP development.
One of the best approaches for MVP development is the agile development approach. The agile approach efficiently addresses the dynamic nature of MVP development. In the agile approach, you build the MVP in a series of cycles through frequent testing and validation with stakeholders.
The system evolves iteration by iteration and acquires new features along the way. You can always change the features if they are not relevant to the market environment. Agile is a practical approach that helps businesses keep their goals first and adapt to the changing market conditions. The priorities and market conditions are factored in during every phase of the agile development process.
Through iterative product development, you can minimize your investment risk. The frequent testing and validation approach of agile helps you avoid features that the users do not need. You can then invest the money into the functionalities actually demanded by the market.
Let’s look at our IoT project, a smart helmet IoT product.
How we Built a Smart Helmet IoT Product??
Our idea was to build IoT-based smart helmet solutions that keep workers safe in the hazardous industrial environment. The IoT helmet should not only keep the workers safe, but it should also record data to boost productivity. Our smart helmet has IoT sensors that collect data regarding the body temperature, ambient temperature, gasses, motion and location and provide it to the administrators.
The following are the industries that can benefit from our smart helmet technology.
We followed a robust IoT MVP development process to build our smart helmet. We built an MVP first and gained the feedback of our intended users. Our team then addressed the issues in our MVP and launched the final product.
During our MVP research stage, we found the following pain points that our users had.
We built a smart helmet that addressed all these issues. By building an MVP first for our smart helmet, we identified these issues and worked on them on time. The minimum viable product cost was negligible compared to the final product’s cost. Moreover, the MVP for our smart helmet helped us iron out our product’s flaws cost-effectively.
Looking for an MVP Software Development Partner for Your IoT Product?
efour provides the best-in-class MVP development services. At efour, we have a team of skilled engineers with vast experience in IoT MVP product design and development. As you can check out the smart helmet project, we have experience in building an entire IoT product from scratch.
We believe IoT technology’s immense potential should be realized in every industry. That’s why we aim to serve the requirements of IoT enthusiasts like you. Come let’s build the future with a leading IoT Software Development Company. Unleash the benefits of embedded software to boost your business.