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    "result": {"data":{"allArticles":{"edges":[{"node":{"excerpt":"","fields":{"slug":"/blog/mvp-development-everything-you-want-to-know-but-are-afraid-to-ask/"},"frontmatter":{"title":"MVP development - everything you want to know, but are afraid to ask","order":null,"content":[{"body":"Well, literally everything.\n\nThe perfect features you gathered could be uninteresting to target users, the backlog might be overloaded with (otherwise great!) “essential” features and the budget that you proposed means your CFO will be avoiding you.\n\nWhile your digital product idea may be potentially successful, the strategy and its execution is crucial. If you are going to:\n\n* start new business with an app,\n* diversify your revenue stream with a new product or service,\n* transfer your offline business to online,\n* test your business idea,\n\nthen you should consider using an **MVP** (**Minimum Viable Product**). And this leads us to one, amazingly important question.\n\n## What is an MVP development and what isn’t it?\n\nThe idea of the MVP has been around in the business world for a while and it is inseparably linked with lean startup methodology. Before we jump into the details, let’s focus on a practical definition of a **Minimum Viable Product** to help us to understand what’s really important here.\n\nWhat are the characteristics of an **MVP app** or website?\n\n**Minimum** - this means that an ideal MVP app should include only a few, core and absolutely vital features. What does that mean in practice?\n\nLet’s imagine a web app, let’s call it “**Director’s Cut**”, that allows movie fans to create accounts and share their recommendations about films with other cinephiles. What would be the minimum features that would allow users to enjoy this web service?\n\n**From a business point of view, a straightforward method of creating personal user accounts is a very basic minimum.** It helps to gather data about users, keeps them close to the app and is essential for marketing campaigns. Every user should be able to create an account quickly, with minimum effort, adding his or her personal info such as a profile picture, nickname, favorite movie genre and even their recommendations for new movies. This is, arguably, the minimum.\n\nFeatures such as adding video avatars, graphic badges, recording videos, and using movie-themed filters and stickers is beyond  a common sense definition of “minimum”.\n\nThis  takes into consideration the economic side of the development process - every new feature added to the scope of your **MVP** means more money spent and more time in development.\n\n**Viable** means capable of functioning. Our cinematic app should have a properly functioning back-end, nicely looking and a user-friendly UX, and should work without crashing every time someone tries to write a review of the new X-Men movie.\n\nThe ‘**P**’ in MVP stands for **Product** and this needs no explanation.\n\nSee more in the article: [What is MVP development](https://www.boldare.com/blog/mvp-what-why-how/). \n\n![Mvp development](how_to_understand_an_MVP.jpg \"Mvp development\")\n\n### An MVP is a tool that provides a minimum of features but makes the app usable and fully functioning.\n\nOur “Director’s cut” app, with a few additional indispensable features I didn’t mention (YouTube support!) is surely an MVP. Users should be able to download it, create an account and engage in discussion with other users.\n\nLong story short: to create an MVP means to launch an app that addresses real user needs, and it's developed in a very short time.\n\nCheck out more here: [How to build a minimum viable product](https://www.boldare.com/blog/how-to-build-mvp-minimum-viable-product/)\n\n## What is not an MVP?\n\nAs we have already defined what an MVP is, let’s look at when a digital product is not an MVP and debunk some of the most popular misunderstandings.\n\n<RelatedArticle title=\"Get huge by starting small - 5 successful digital businesses which started with MVP\" />\n\n### An MVP is not a prototype\n\nAn MVP is a working piece of software that should and can be used by real users. A prototype (read more about [digitatal prototypes](https://www.boldare.com/blog/digital-product-prototyping-whats-it-all-about/) here) on the other hand, is usually a graphic representation of a future product that can be tested by potential users or investors to represent a very general idea. It can be clickable, but has no working functionalities and can’t be released to the market.\n\nWhat’s more, MVPs and prototypes are two separate stages of business product development, according to the lean startup methodology. The full process includes:\n\n* Prototyping\n* Minimum viable product (MVP)\n* Product-market fit\n* Scaling\n\nIf you’re interested in knowing more about prototyping, read our article on [How prototyping can bring your business ideas to life](https://www.boldare.com/blog/prototyping-can-bring-your-business-to-life/).\n\n### An MVP doesn’t mean cutting corners\n\nIf you’re thinking of producing a great product but you want to save costs by dropping viable functionalities and making it quicker than is really possible, then it’s not a real MVP. It’s just an app that is made … badly. Why is it a bad idea to release such product?\n\n* Users will not appreciate an unfinished or buggy app.\n* Most likely, your hypothesis will not be viable.\n* Your potential customers will be scared off.\n* You may expose your brand to a crisis of reputation.\n\n### An MVP is not a final version of the app\n\nYes, the ideal **MVP development** should include the most important features to enable users to interact with it. Nonetheless, it doesn’t matter that the development process will only be finished after releasing the app to the market. This is just the beginning, and you should already be thinking about an actionable roadmap based on customer feedback and data collected from actual users.\n\n### An MVP is not for startups only\n\nMany people, including those working in the IT industry, associate MVPs with startups only. While new businesses can benefit from using an MVP to enter the market or pitch investors, it’s not a tool reserved only for them. **MVPs can be profitable for companies of different maturity levels and different industries**.\n\nNow we know what an MVP is (and isn’t), let’s move forward to see what’s most important when building an MVP.\n\n<RelatedArticle title=\"Choosing a digital product development partner - the political and economic issues\" />\n\n## The real purpose of an MVP - testing and validating\n\nIt’s simple, an MVP helps you to validate your business idea. To make use of this tool, you need to define your business hypothesis first. And do so before beginning to build the actual app. Our fictional hypothesis for “Director’s Cut” app will be:\n\n*The number of active users is growing and traction is steady. Taking into account the current growth rate, and the CPM (‘cost per mile’) price for displaying ads in the app, “Director’s Cut” will be profitable within 6 months from launch.*\n\nWith this approach, you should probably take into account such metrics as:\n\n* Number of new accounts,\n* Number of active users,\n* Growth rate\n* User engagement rates and traffic\n* ROI\n\nWhy are those data and metrics so important?\n\nBecause one of the most common mistakes decision makers are making is assuming that they know “for sure” how such a product should work and what kind of results it will bring. Sometimes their guess is right (that’s great!), but most likely, it’s not.\n\nWithout validating and testing, it’s impossible to make valuable, data-driven decisions. This is why one of the ideas that stands behind MVPs as a tool is “**validate, don’t guess**”.\n\nJust to sum things up, **what would the perfect, ideal outcome of MVP development?**\n\n* Having a working app or service.\n* Validating your business idea and learning if it makes sense to make your product the way you planned.\n* A steadily growing number of active users.\n* Time to market ratio is minimized.\n* Valuable feedback coming from users, that can be easily mapped in the backlog as future functions.\n* A clearly visible and defined roadmap for product development and scaling.\n\nAll of this can be concluded in one very simple and smart sentence I found in [this article](https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-get-your-mvp-right-building-your-breakthrough-startup-620fcaa22082) written by Lukas Gisder-Dubé:\n\n> Time spent not on the market equals time wasted.\n\nSimple as can be!\n\n![Mvp development cost & benefits](The_real_purpose_of_an_MVP.jpg \"Mvp development cost & benefits\")\n\n## MVP cost - the resources and costs perspective\n\nIf your organization has an in-house design and development team that is capable of making an MVP, then calculating the budget is quite easy.\n\nWhat if you, regardless of the reasons, prefer to work with an external software development partner?\n\nIn the [software development](https://www.boldare.com/categories/software-development/) industry, many things are relative. For example, the cost of app development varies because it depends on multiple factors. However, an MVP is supposed to be quick to design and develop and this approach is influenced by two main indicators: time and human resources. To give you an idea on what you should expect when it comes to the whole development process, take a look at the data from our, Boldare’s, perspective.\n\n**The “average” MVP app or web means**:\n\n* A dedicated team made of up to 3 or 4 members, including product designers, developers and usually a scrum master that helps to organize work and maintain focus.\n* The price for the whole service (consulting, design, development etc.) somewhere between **$30k and $60k**. Note that this factor strongly depends on the scope of works.\n* **6 to 8 weeks before the app hits the market.**\n* Both teams working in scrum and agile frameworks.\n* Working code delivered within 1-2 weeks and new features added incrementally.\n* In most cases, we organize workshops that allow both teams (the client’s and ours) to meet, learn about each other and very clearly understand the business goals and product details.\n* Taking into account the different needs of our partners, we always offer two, slightly different and tailor-made proposals that vary in proposed solutions and price.\n\nI hope that gives a better idea of what you could potentially expect from us.\n\n## MVP - the good practices and pro tips\n\nIf you decide to work with an external development company, most likely the assigned team will consist of a **developer**, a **product designer** and a **scrum master** (in the case of working with Boldare, it will). To give you better insight into what is important in the MVP development process, we asked our employees with experience in such projects to share their pro tips with you.\n\n“Flexibility is the key”, says **Damian Kozar**, one of Boldare’s **software developers**.\n\n> Remember that it’s all about validation of a real business need, not about full implementation of an initial idea. Multiple changes and pivots happens on a daily basis and the technology stack has to be prepared for that. From the developer’s perspective, when working on an MVP, it’s very important to choose tools that will enable agile and quick implementation of most basic functionalities, but also the flexibility to change and add features in the near future. **The perfect set-up for an MVP should allow the release of a working piece of code very quickly**. In the case of a strategic decision to switch to different technology, the app should be easy to recreate in the new environment. On the other hand, the technology stack should include a lot of space to grow - after finishing the MVP stage, the product has to be developed further.\n\n**Paweł Capaja**, a Boldare product designer **with over 11 years of experience**, suggested three personal pro tips to product owners working on an MVP.:\n\n> One of the best ways to kick off the development process, is by conducting [User Story Mapping workshops](https://www.boldare.com/blog/agile-process-for-digital-product-development/). These are a great way to set the goals and scope of the whole development process. It’s extremely important for both sides, to “be on the same page” and understand one another’s needs perfectly. Another super important thing to pay attention to is having a detailed, but realistic roadmap, so that every single team member knows the timeframe and when each functionality should be delivered. **Time is money!** Regular and frequent reviews of work progress are indispensable, and one of the ways to make sure they happen is working in a scrum methodology. An experienced scrum team needs minimum supervision and knows how to deliver iterations.\n\n**Iwona Franke** is a Boldare **scrum master** mostly focused on MVPs. I asked her about the most important thing when working on MVPs from her point of view, and about what product owners (working on behalf of our partners) should pay special attention to.\n\n> I think that the two-sided workshops at which we start work on an MVP are crucial. It’s because we want to be sure that the entire team understands the purpose of the MVP we want to build and workshops are the best way to set clear goals and understand each other’s expectations. **During the development process, we are regularly checking if we’re still on track and if we are still going in the direction set at the beginning, which helps us validate the hypothesis we set during those initial talks”** - said Iwona.\n\nWhat about the product owner representing our partners?\n\n> It’s important to bear in mind that the MVP we are working on is a test. We are validating a hypothesis and this means that at the end of the day, it’s possible that we will have to change the app extensively and discard most of the features. Knowing that should help with setting the goals and priorities for the whole team. So, if you - as a product owner - have the chance to work on an [MVP](https://www.boldare.com/services/mvp-development/), you need to ask yourself: **is this particular part of the app really essential to test the idea or the product or not?** This kind of approach can save a lot of time!”\n\nI hope you find this insights useful!\n\n## **MVP teams**\n\nAs already mentioned above, a team working on an MVP should understand its purpose, and should also have previous experience with this type of product. When we create an **[MVP team](https://www.boldare.com/blog/minimum-viable-product-team/)** for our partners, we select experts who have not only worked on numerous **MVP releases**, but also meet the following conditions:\n\n* are able to resist including even the most interesting features, if they don’t fit the MVP concept of delivering only the most crucial functionalities\n* are strong in problem solving, not only on a technical level\n* practice excellent communication, staying in constant touch with the product’s stakeholders\n\nAnd most importantly: they know **how to balance MVP best practices, product quality and business goals.**\n\n## What comes after an MVP development?\n\nReleasing a minimum viable product to a market is just the beginning! Next you have to focus on testing, validating and studying: does your MVP fulfil your hypothesis, or maybe it still lacks something?\n\n**Some of the many potential paths after releasing an MVP are:**\n\n* Testing and gathering data to check if the hypothesis was validated or not.\n* Adding or removing features according to the gathered information.\n* Working on a brand new version of the app.\n* Moving forward to the next product stage, product-market-fit which means working on new features and platforms.\n\nAt Boldare, we work closely with our partners to map out next steps based on the information we gather during MVP stage. We help with carrying out tests and choosing the right tools, and offer support from our business analysts.\n\nAfter a successful validation, the perfect scenario “after the MVP” would be to enlarge the team, create a backlog and embark on a new adventure!\n\n## MVP development - a tool to leverage your business\n\nAs mentioned at the beginning, an MVP has a lot to offer organizations that want to work with new business ideas, apps or services. An MVP is based on the agile approach and thus has a broad range of use cases. If you build and use it properly, an MVP can carry a lot of benefits for your current and future products."}],"job":null,"photo":null,"slug":null,"cover":"Building_and_MVP_app_product_or_service.jpg","lead":"**So, you have a plan for a perfect MVP app, web service or new business line?** Everything is defined and the backlog is full of amazing features that your users will surely love. You just need to develop it (with an in-house dev team or an external one) and wait for the well deserved applause. **What could possibly go wrong?**","templateKey":"article-page","specialArticle":false,"isNewWork":null,"isNewNormal":null,"service":null,"settings":{"date":"2019-07-22T10:15:47.196Z","slug":"mvp-development-everything-you-want-to-know","type":"blog","slugType":null,"category":"MVP","additionalCategories":["Digital Product"],"url":null},"author":"Adam Ziemba","authorAdditional":"","box":{"content":{"title":"Learn about benefits of building an MVP","tileDescription":"The idea of the MVP has been around in the business world for a while and it is inseparably linked with lean startup methodology. Before we jump into the details, let’s focus on a practical definition of a Minimum Viable Product to help us to understand what’s really important here.","coverImage":"MVP_for_renewables_and_consulting.png","tags":null},"coverImage":null,"settings":null,"type":"BLOG"}},"id":"f8c5f3ad-5fcf-53c9-b52a-c49ad7d5ec50"}},{"node":{"excerpt":"","fields":{"slug":"/blog/how-prototyping-can-bring-your-business-ideas-to-life/"},"frontmatter":{"title":"How Prototyping Can Bring Your Business Ideas to Life","order":null,"content":[{"body":"The prototyping stage is often skipped in favour of going straight to production of a minimum viable product ([MVP)](https://www.boldare.com/blog/mvp-what-why-how/) but at Boldare, we understand the value of prototyping as a design-based business tool and use it when it will add value. The key to a successful prototype is the experience and skills of the team delivering it.\n\n## Prototyping as an essential business tool for better digital designs\n\nIf you’ve ever tried to introduce a new digital product, feature, scale existing one or just pitch the idea to the board  – you know you can’t just go from an idea straight to full production. That approach could work (though you probably have more chance of winning the lottery) but if you want a mobile or web app that meets your users’ needs and also your sales or distribution targets, there are a few very important design steps along the way. And one that is often neglected is the need to create a prototype.\n\nHow to build a successful digital product? Here at Boldare, we have a proven approach to delivering business value. We create web and mobile apps and other digital product development projects using the lean startup methodology as our key tool, with its four-stage design process:\n\n* Prototyping\n* Minimum viable product (MVP)\n* Product-market fit\n* Scaling\n\n![Business prototyping](img/2_full-cycle-product-development-stages-prototype.png \"Business prototyping\")\n\nNot every product will need all four stages but what we often see is people aiming straight for the MVP. Maybe it’s a case of MVPs have a higher profile, are seen as somehow ‘sexier’ but when the budget is limited and the deadline is tight (so that’s every project, right?) it can be tempting to cut the prototyping stage, rely on the original idea, and work out the bugs in the MVP.\n\nThat can be short-sighted, if not disastrous. It’s a classic case of Maslow’s words, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.” **Often, the business success of your product will require the business idea to be tested before the coding, UI design and everything else begins. And a prototype is the ideal tool to do that.** At Boldare, we prefer to offer our clients a more substantial toolkit.\n\n**Prototypes are the first chance to confirm your concept and engage users with your new web or mobile app,** involve them in the design process, and create a better mobile app – one more likely to meet with business success.\n\n## What are prototypes?\n\nBefore we go any further, let’s define what prototypes are.\n\n**A prototype is a design tool. It is the first test of your mobile app’s business concept.** It is a way of presenting user representatives (and stakeholders, and investors) with your idea and getting their reactions and feedback in order to test and refine that idea before you invest serious time and energy in digital design.\n\nPrototype designs often don’t look anything like the final product. That’s not what prototyping is about. Your prototype may not even have a physical presence at all. At Boldare, instead of a particular design format, we focus the prototyping process on your business needs, including what you’re aiming to achieve, and what your users need and want.\n\n**Our approach incorporates what lies behind the prototype: the skilled and knowledgeable consulting on product concept, design, user experience, marketing and, finally, the actual prototype of your new web or mobile app.**\n\nWhen prototyping, it is important to bear in mind the difference between a prototype and an MVP: **the prototype tests the idea for your app**, the MVP is a test of the web or mobile app itself (or at least, a potential version of it). The MVP is actually an app, albeit a limited one, whereas the prototype is the semblance of an app, a mock-up made to prompt feedback. When the two are used together in a design process, the prototype becomes the foundation for the later work on the MVP.\n\n<RelatedArticle title=\"What is an MVP in an Agile context?\" />\n\nFinally, prototyping is usually a quick design process. The classic lean startup text, [Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas In Just Five Days](http://www.amazon.com/Sprint-Solve-Problems-Test-Ideas/dp/150112174X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457390703&sr=8-1&keywords=sprint+by+jake+knapp), by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz, talks about splitting the design process into short ‘sprints’. At Boldare, we treat each project as unique, giving it the time it needs and deserves. **On average, from initial discussion of the business idea to prototype design takes 7-14 days**. This may seem quick but prototypes are not and never will be final products (they’re just tools, remember?). Too much detailed work is just wasted time and effort and that’s not good business sense.\n\n## The business uses of prototyping\n\n**To understand the value of prototyping, it’s important to be clear on the business benefits and uses.** The most obvious benefit is that thanks to user reactions and feedback, you go on to create a better final version of your web or mobile app or other digital product.\n\nThe prototype is an opportunity to explore the initial product idea, including the needs it aims to address, and better understand your final goal (while taking a big step toward it). **What’s more, by testing user feedback at an early stage, you’ll save time later in the design process and bring your final app to market more quickly**. Even better, when done properly, prototyping is relatively quick to do and is low-cost.\n\nBut how do you know when to prototype? The following scenarios can benefit from a prototype:\n\n1. **Validate your idea for a web or mobile app or product** – this is the most basic use of prototyping, getting user reactions and feedback.\n2. **Fundraising** – when approaching investors, venture capitalists or other potential partners, a single prototype that embodies your business idea can worth dozens of PowerPoint slides. Prototypes are not just for testing user needs, they’re also testing the market.\n3. **Pre-sales** – you can use a prototype to create interest in a forthcoming mobile app or product feature, potentially generate pre-release sales and orders.\n4. **Executive sponsorship** – before you sell to the customer, you have to sell to the boss, or C-suite, or Board, or however you describe your in-house decision-makers. As with investors and users, a prototype offers something visual and tangible to seal the deal – a tool with leverage.\n5. **Better teamwork on the development project** – designing and coding are two different skills, often two different roles, but they need to work closely on the final product; a prototype can help create a joint understanding of exactly what you’re building and why.\n6. **Product redesign** – we’ve all known products that have completely overhauled then marketed under the same branding or name (the automobile industry does it all the time); before such an apparently huge change is made, prototyping can help test individual changes (e.g. single features within a web or mobile app) with users before revamping the whole package.\n\nIt may be a single process but prototyping is a multi-use tool!\n\n![Business prototype](img/Feedback_on_prototype.jpg \"User's feedback is crucial for prototyping\")\n\n## User feedback on your design makes for a better product\n\nThe key purpose of prototype web or mobile apps, whatever their purpose, is to generate reactions and feedback from users. Obviously, user feedback is valuable at any time but at this stage – when ideas and designs are on the drawing board – it is absolutely essential.\n\nIncidentally, at the prototyping stage, “users” can be interpreted broadly - yes, it’s the app’s potential customers, but also internal and external stakeholders who have an interest or useful opinion; including employee focus groups and key position-holders such as the CEO and CTO.\n\nJust to summarize, the key principles of user feedback for digital product design are:\n\n* **Ask the right people** – Present your design (or designs) to those you hope will use them; e.g. if you’re building a web-based  yacht-booking tool or platform, seek out people who like to rent yachts!\n* **Know what to ask** – “What do you think of it?” is maybe a good opening question but for feedback that will improve your design you need to be a little more targeted. Is it the basic concept of the app? The usability of the prototype tool? The circumstances in which it might be used?\n* **Stay neutral** – Of course you’re biased about the apps you design and build but that’s not helpful when asking for user feedback. Use neutral language to talk about the designs. And when there’s criticism of prototypes, don’t defend it, just listen and learn.\n\nFeedback is an important part of any user-centered development process and one of the key tools in ensuring not only a well-designed product but also business success.\n\n## New mobile app and business prototyping is a design process\n\nLet’s say you’re convinced and want to create a prototype to test your new mobile app idea. Great. But before you begin, it’s worth mentioning one other important aspect of prototyping: it’s part of a design process. So what? Well, like any other design tool or element, prototyping requires a particular skill set**. At Boldare, we usually build clickable digital prototypes, often using HTML/CSS or JavaScript as a tool, but also InVision, Flinto, and Framer,** whatever is the best tool to create an approximation of what the product might look like.\n\nIn other words, our **prototypes are a bridge between the initial (back of a napkin) business idea and the future mobile app you’ll create**. This means close collaboration between a number of roles, potentially including a Frontend Developer, Interaction Designer, UX Designer, Product Designer, Business Analyst, Digital Strategist, and Scrum Master.Add to this the use of a variety of prototyping tools and techniques (e.g. [**Design Thinking** ](https://www.boldare.com/blog/what-is-design-thinking/)and wireframing) plus business analysis, and one or more tools such as JavaScript, AngularJS, InVision, Flinto, Framer.js, LYMB, HTML, Bootstrap, and Foundation, and the skills and knowledge of your prototyping team are rapidly becoming mission-critical.\n\nDepending on the size and/or focus of your business and it’s possible you don’t have everything you need in-house.\n\n## Prototyping leads to better business\n\nA prototype is a useful, often essential, tool and can be the foundation of a successful web or mobile app or other digital product. Low-cost in terms of time and money, prototypes are a key part of the design process and offer quick, low-risk input from users, investors and other stakeholders which can validate your initial business idea (or not).\n\n**Put simply, prototyping enables you to understand your own proposed product designs better.** However, ultimately the usefulness of your prototype app will depend on the quality, skills and experience of the team chosen to create it."}],"job":null,"photo":null,"slug":null,"cover":"Prototyping_as_a_tool.jpg","lead":"If you want a successful mobile or web app or other digital product that translates your business idea into a genuine success, prototyping can be a valuable tool as part of the design process. Prototypes are usually relatively cheap and quick to produce and help you engage with users early to test the basic product concept.","templateKey":"article-page","specialArticle":false,"isNewWork":null,"isNewNormal":null,"service":null,"settings":{"date":"2019-04-10T09:58:56.408Z","slug":"prototyping-can-bring-your-business-to-life","type":"blog","slugType":null,"category":"Digital Product","additionalCategories":["Digital Product"],"url":null},"author":"Artur Belka","authorAdditional":null,"box":{"content":{"title":"How Prototyping Can Bring Your Business Ideas to Life","tileDescription":"If you want a successful mobile or web app or other digital product that translates your business idea into a genuine success, prototyping can be a valuable tool as part of the design process. Prototypes are usually relatively cheap and quick to produce and help you engage with users early to test the basic product concept.","coverImage":"Prototyping_as_a_tool.jpg","tags":null},"coverImage":null,"settings":null,"type":"BLOG"}},"id":"89387986-f699-584d-8e5a-6f776ad336a6"}},{"node":{"excerpt":"","fields":{"slug":"/blog/how-much-should-you-pay-for-digital-product-development/"},"frontmatter":{"title":"How much should you pay for a digital product development?","order":null,"content":[{"body":"Imagine you’re in the mountains. Choosing a digital product development partner is like choosing a climbing partner. You can try to reach your goal with a random person you met online, maybe they’ll offer to chip in for the cost of the climb, but are you concerned about saving money or getting to the top safely?\n\n<RelatedArticle title=\"This is how Boldare Development Teams process addresses your business needs\" />\n\nYour life can depend on your choice. **What matters most in the mountains is trust in your partner.** My instructor told me during a high-altitude hiking course that fear was normal, but there was no place for taking risks in the mountains; he would rather climb with a person who was afraid than with a person who rejected fear and made risky decisions, putting both partners in danger. Of course, any mountain trek has risks, so you must do everything to minimize them, including choosing the right partner.\n\n## How does it work business-wise?\n\nPeter Drucker once wrote:\n\n> The attempt to eliminate risks \\[in business], even the attempt to minimize them, can only make them irrational and unbearable. It can only result in that greatest risk of all: rigidity.\n\n**Just like going into the mountains, externalization of software development projects is risky and the choice of partner is crucial if you want to limit this risk**. Ideally, you’re looking for security and a long-term partnership but the wrong freelancer can disappear overnight, without any knowledge transfer, leaving your product on the rocks.\n\n### A fair price\n\nIf you want to hire a good specialist in Poland for a fair price, you need to know that nowadays, $10 for an hour of a programmer’s time does not guarantee that you have chosen the right partner.\n\nEven if you find a company (probably a body shop kind) offering a price of $10 to $25, keep in mind that the developer working on your product is likely to change employer sooner or later, especially now that globalization enables them to cooperate with any western company and receive a much higher salary.\n\nYou may say: “Ok, so what? My deal is with the company. They’ll replace them!” That’s true, but do you want to pay for the onboarding of someone new, waiting for them to get to know the product and then build a relationship from scratch?\n\n<RelatedArticle title=\"Software Development Outsourcing - everything you should know\" />\n\n## How much is the professional approach?\n\nThe table below shows a cost analysis which I prepared based on information from several partner software companies in Poland. All of them treat their employees as the most valuable asset entrusted to clients.\n\n![How much should you pay for a digital product development - the cost analysis](Development_of_digital_products_cost_analysis.jpg \"Development of digital products - the cost analysis\")\n\nIt is worth checking out [the data published by Accelerance](https://www.accelerance.com/download-the-2018-guide-to-global-software-outsourcing-rates), which shows that an hourly rate for a senior developer from CEE is actually around $45 - $50.\n\n**So, what budget do you need in order to increase the probability of finding a motivated and committed team?** How much do you need to spend to reduce the risks arising from an external partner? Based on the above data, you can assume that it is worth talking with companies in the $38 to $67 per hour price range. Only then will you have a guarantee that you do not talk with a ‘body shop’ only interested in the amount on the invoice issued to you.\n\nAt first glance, you may think, “**Ok, but by employing a cheaper freelancer, I am paying half the price. So, even if they work twice as long, I will still have an advantage**.” Are you sure? Have you considered the cost of missing the best moment to enter the market and take advantage of a business opportunity? Take a look below to better understand why it is worth working with an organization that provides complex, digital solutions to a company rather than a freelancer.\n\n![Freelancer's costs versus qualities he provides](Freelancer_costs_versus_quality_of_his_work.jpg \"Freelancer's costs versus qualities he provides\")\n\nAs you can see, when choosing a freelance service, you basically only get “Knowledge” and “Tech Skills” for what you pay, and in today’s reality it is not enough to adequately respond to the needs of users and to the market. Note that when you work with a freelancer, you rely only, and I mean only, on them.\n\n**The experience, support and transfer of knowledge in the organization are incredible values that benefit the development team**. Every problem encountered while building your product can be solved using the knowledge, skills and experience of programmers working for the company. Thanks to their available synergy, companies are able to provide services of the highest quality and solve advanced problems, which would not be possible for a solitary programmer.\n\n### A low rate is a poor authenticating factor\n\nYour positive answers to the questions at the beginning of this article show that you know that when expecting quality, partnership and security, a low price should start alarm bells ringing. The requirements and dynamics of today’s IT market oblige employers to provide specialists with appropriate working conditions. The days when a programmer would be handed a task and just mindlessly code it are long gone. **The 21st century programmer is independent, has an impact on the product, proposes solutions, understands the needs of system users, and requires constant development in terms of hard and soft skills.**\n\n**Boldare adds a new dimension to digital product development services built on partnership and trust**. We believe that the effectiveness and motivation of our teams result not only from the remuneration itself but also from the development opportunity, organizational support, access to the best equipment and tools in an agile office and making the highest quality products to meet the needs of end users.\n\nYou want to test a business idea with minimum cost, time and effort? [See how to do it! ](https://www.boldare.com/work/case-study-boldare/)\n\n<EngagementBanner title=\"Do you know must-ask questions to find a right development partner?\" url=\"/resources/development-partner-checklist/\" buttonText=\"Download free checklist\" buttonColor=\"yellow\" />"}],"job":null,"photo":null,"slug":null,"cover":"How_much_should_you_pay_for_a_digital_product_developemnt.jpg","lead":"**Ask yourself, what do you expect from your potential partner in a digital product development process?** Is it security for your business? Long-term business partnership? Fair price? High-quality services? **If you answered “YES” to all of these questions, you should definitely read on.** If not, then you probably like taking risks and enjoy a surge of adrenaline when picking a freelancer, but you should read on too, maybe there’s a better way.","templateKey":"article-page","specialArticle":false,"isNewWork":null,"isNewNormal":null,"service":null,"settings":{"date":"2019-02-01T15:19:28.796Z","slug":"how-much-should-you-pay-for-digital-product-development","type":"blog","slugType":null,"category":"Strategy","additionalCategories":["Software development"],"url":null},"author":"Adam Ziemba","authorAdditional":null,"box":{"content":{"title":"Looking for a digital product development partner? ","tileDescription":"Ask yourself, what do you expect from your potential partner in a digital product development process? Is it security for your business? Long-term business partnership? Fair price? High-quality services?","coverImage":"How_much_should_you_pay_for_a_digital_product_developemnt.jpg","tags":null},"coverImage":null,"settings":null,"type":"BLOG"}},"id":"95f1cc78-0016-5002-b2d9-074325c4687e"}},{"node":{"excerpt":"","fields":{"slug":"/blog/choosing-digital-product-development-partner-political-and-economic-issues/"},"frontmatter":{"title":"Choosing a digital product development partner - the political and economic issues","order":null,"content":[{"body":"And no wonder as, very often, there is little difference in quality and customer service, and the quality/price ratio offers considerable financial benefits.\n\nWe live in a global village and it has long been accepted that contracting out digital product development work is an effective method to enable companies to acquire competence and generate significant profit. **Put simply, in-house teams are not a competitive advantage anymore.**\n\nAs IT specialists become ever more skilled due to high competition and simpler access to knowledge, the question arises: **why should a client from France, the US, or even the UAE choose Poland if similar service quality and lower prices are easily available elsewhere?**\n\nObviously, for companies looking for financial optimization only, the choice is simple; yet for those who consciously manage their product and business, not so much. What follows is the perspective of a Product Owner, the person responsible for the product development vision…\n\n<RelatedArticle title=\"8 Benefits Of Outsourcing your Software Development to Poland\" />\n\n## The political and economic situation\n\nIt is clear that the political and economic situation of the potential partner’s country affects your digital product. **Your team needs to feel safe and secure and work in a place where peace and financial stability are guaranteed**.\n\nImagine your team being unable to get to work or struggling with insufficient food supplies. Building a product in this type of environment is always risky and you must remember that most of your know-how is located where your remote team is located.\n\n## Energy security\n\nJust imagine a situation where **you cannot get in touch with your development team** and the release of an important functionality cannot go ahead on time **because of… a power cut?**\n\nThis may sound like something from the 1970s, but energy security is still a problem in some regions of the world. In our industry, electricity is the basis of anything we do: it must be reliable because when delivering a product, we cannot afford downtime, communication problems, or any lack of support at crucial moments.\n\n<RelatedArticle title=\"The great dilemma. Agile or waterfall?\" />\n\n## Information security\n\nEvery couple of weeks, you can read news online about cyber-attacks directed at companies and institutions around the world. Unfortunately, such incidents are part of modern life and the reality is that some countries are more at risk than others. **Remember that your system and its sensitive user data need to be safe.**\n\n**Saving a few dollars when selecting a provider can eventually result in greater losses,** both in terms of your public image and your finances.\n\nOf course, no place on earth is actually 100% safe in this respect but you should still look to ensure a decent level of security to protect your data from cyber-attacks.\n\n## Easy direct contact\n\nThe most efficient collaboration is when there is no division between the provider and the client: we all form one team working on product development. **As Poland is an EU member and belongs to the Schengen Area, there are no barriers preventing European clients from visiting their partners in Poland and vice versa**. It is also much easier to visit to and from a country outside the EU if it has a signed international contract allowing citizens to enter the territory. Why is this so significant?\n\n![Communication is everything - also while working on digital product](/img/02262-_tst1290-2x.jpg \"Communication is everything - also while working on digital product\")\n\nTo create a successful product, the team must be reliable, well-integrated, and committed. Nothing builds trust better than a direct meeting. When deciding on a team to collaborate with, make sure you’ll be able to shake the hand of the developer who is going to provide your users with a valuable product.\n\n## Macroeconomics matter as well\n\nThe standard of living in most countries offering low prices is lower than in Poland or Western Europe, so young talented specialists often decide to work abroad. **Since the European market opened up to foreign employees, the best IT specialists can now be found in Poland** and other European companies.\n\nThink of the risk connected with the fact that if your team is located in a distant country, it can break up due to economic migration, and you will lose the technological know-how related to your product along with the team members.\n\n<RelatedArticle title=\"Building successful apps using scrum development\" />\n\n## While you were sleeping\n\n**Take time zones into consideration.** Sometimes even one hour’s difference between you and your team can be significant. If you’re planning to be regularly in touch with your developers, take notice of when they get up in the morning and go to bed in the evening. Especially at the beginning of your cooperation, intensive contact while working together on the product vision is just indispensable.\n\n## Summary\n\n**Don’t forget that product development is not merely about cost**. Of course, specialists all over the world are becoming equally skilled and when you read reviews of companies from various parts of the world on [Clutch.co](https://clutch.co/profile/boldare), equivalent quality at a more attractive price can be tempting.\n\nHowever, if you decide to collaborate with a digital product design and development company operating in a country whose political and economic situation is unstable, you must accept the risks and problems described above.\n\nThey will certainly have an impact on your product and business. **You will pay less but risk more – keep that in mind.**\n\n<EngagementBanner title=\"Do you know must-ask questions to find a right development partner?\" url=\"/resources/development-partner-checklist/\" buttonText=\"Download free checklist\" buttonColor=\"yellow\" />"}],"job":null,"photo":null,"slug":null,"cover":"img/video-call-at-conference-room.jpg","lead":"Until recently, Poland was the global leader for [external software development services](https://www.boldare.com/blog/software-development-outsourcing-everything-you-should-know/), but the latest trends indicate that the competition is growing. East-Central Europe, South Asia, and even Africa and South America have become increasingly popular as outposting destinations for Western companies.","templateKey":"article-page","specialArticle":false,"isNewWork":null,"isNewNormal":null,"service":null,"settings":{"date":"2019-02-01T08:23:28.926Z","slug":"choosing-digital-product-development-partner-political-and-economic-issues","type":"blog","slugType":null,"category":"Strategy","additionalCategories":["Digital Product"],"url":null},"author":"Artur Belka","authorAdditional":null,"box":{"content":{"title":"Choosing a development partner - the political and economic issues","tileDescription":"Until recently, Poland was the global leader for external software development services, but the latest trends indicate that the competition is growing. East-Central Europe, South Asia, and even Africa and South America have become increasingly popular as outposting destinations for Western companies.","coverImage":"img/video-call-at-conference-room.jpg","tags":null},"coverImage":null,"settings":null,"type":"BLOG"}},"id":"5df42308-319e-5e86-b1df-42dcad8f925d"}},{"node":{"excerpt":"","fields":{"slug":"/blog/minimum-viable-products-it-s-all-about-the-team/"},"frontmatter":{"title":"Minimum Viable Products? It’s all about the team","order":null,"content":[{"body":"At Boldare, we take pride in our **teamwork**. Not just because we all get along just fine but because we take great care in assembling the right team for the client… in putting a group of people together with all the necessary skills and knowledge to ideate, design and develop your web experience.\n\nFrom initial [product workshop](https://www.boldare.com/categories/product-workshops/) to market-tested scalable product, our teams are high-performing from the get go and capable of shifting their focus and process depending on what stage the project is at.\n\nWhen working on an **[MVP](https://www.boldare.com/blog/mvp-development-everything-you-want-to-know/)** (**minimum viable product**), a Boldare team brings a very specific skill set and approach to bear.\n\n\\>> Learn more about our process: [Full Cycle Product Development](https://www.boldare.com/services/full-cycle-product-development/)\n\n## Quick context: What’s a Minimum Viable Product?\n\nThe MVP is a core element (perhaps the core element) of our [lean startup approach](https://www.boldare.com/blog/lean-process-for-better-product/) to product development. The **minimum viable product** is not a prototype. Nor is it a full-scale product ready for market. The MVP is an experiment, a way to test real-life user responses to an aspect of the solution being developed. It’s a way of **testing and refining project assumptions** in order to create a product that genuinely meets user needs.\n\nAs a method of gathering rapid feedback on specific design features, it’s hard to beat a minimum viable product and some projects may involve a series of MVP experiments as stepping stones toward a final result.\n\n![Minimum viable team](/img/Product-Development-chart-MVP-Stage.png)\n\nResponses to a minimum viable product enable the team to gain a deeper understanding of:\n\n* The central problem and whether the product so far is on track to solve it.\n* The target audience for the product – Is the product pitched at the right people and, if so, is it giving them what they really need?\n* Necessary future development – Each MVP is a signpost pointing to the next stage of the design project (and not always in the direction anticipated at project kick-off).\n\n## Putting together a Minimum Viable Product team\n\nThe accountabilities of an MVP team can be summarized as:\n\n1. testing the product hypothesis with minimal resources;\n2. putting together a most basic solution to solve the problem (or part of the problem);\n3. designing and developing a viable (partial) version of the product; and\n4. gathering and analyzing feedback from the test audience.\n\nIn light of these accountabilities, then depending on the nature of the project and the product being developed, the **MVP team typically includes** **people skilled in a variety of key roles:**\n\n* Frontend Developer\n* Backend Developer\n* Visual Designer\n* Interaction Designer\n* UX Designer\n* Product Designer\n* Business Analyst\n* DevOps\n* Qualitative/Quantitative Design Researcher\n* Digital Strategist\n* Scrum Master\n\nThe purpose of the team is to **create the MVP quickly** (usually, design sprints take place over a two-week period) and get it to users for feedback. The construction of the MVP will incorporate any lessons learned from previous feedback and discussion and may include a prototype stage, depending on the needs of the product. The responses to any project prototypes will influence the choice of features to be tested by the MVP.\n\n![Boldare Minimum viable product team](/img/boldare-team-testing.jpg)\n\nWhen deciding on who specifically should be a member of the team, we apply our team selection criteria:\n\n* **People who have worked together in the past** – The performance of any team depends at least in part on familiarity between the team members. With this in mind, we always include at least two team members who worked together on a previous project. This helps the new team accelerate through (or even skip) the forming and storming stages of the team development process, arriving at the point at which they can deliver real value to the client much more quickly than a team that starts out as strangers.\n* **Skilled, self-organizing people** – We select a balance of complementary soft and hard skills so that we have everything in the team we need to deliver what is needed to reach your business goals.\n* **People with mixed levels of seniority** – Experience is invaluable. But so is a fresh perspective. With our MVP teams, we strive for a combination that can leverage both for the client.\n\nHaving so far delivered more than **250 digital products over a 14-year period**, we understand that effective minimum viable products (and eventually, high quality full products) are built by teams that can innovate, think fresh and at the same time bring their deep experience to bear on the development process.\n\n## The perfect Minimum Viable Product culture\n\nEvery organization, and every team, has a culture – a set of norms and values that influence attitudes, behaviors and how the people in that organization or team work together.\n\nHere at Boldare, an MVP team works on the following principles:\n\n* **Pro-risk** – The whole point of the lean startup approach is to deal with projects in which the shape of the resulting product is not known at the outset. Hence the step-by-step process of experimentation using MVPs. When we don’t know exactly what success looks like, risks must be taken.\n* **Agility** – We are an agile organization and all our teams are at home in constantly changing environments, working with disruptive technologies via rapid iterations and experimentation and if the feedback tells us the current direction is wrong, then we can support the client to pivot (i.e. change orientation but without losing the benefit of what has gone before).\n* **Business-oriented** – First and foremost, throughout the project, are the client’s business goals.\n* **Anti-perfectionism** – Striving for ‘perfect’ is distinctly un-agile, and runs contrary to the purpose of an MVP, defined by lean startup founder Eric Ries as, “to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.” The perfectionist approach is the polar opposite of “least effort” and is really the biggest enemy of useful experimentation; especially when the detail of the final product isn’t known from the outset.\n\nIn a sense, this culture gives team members a common ground; it’s what holds the team together and enables it to work effectively in an agile environment.\n\n![Working with an mvp team](/img/team-meeting-in-conference-room.jpg)\n\n## Benefits of working with an MVP team\n\nAs mentioned earlier, the MVP is a central part of the lean startup approach to product development, helping you enter the market with maximum speed and minimum cost.\n\nDrawing on the learning from the prototype phase, the MVP team will apply the **[build-measure-learn](https://www.boldare.com/blog/build-measure-learn-cycle/) principle** to test your assumptions, refine your ideas and turn them into a tangible (and testable) object. The team will provide expert advice and support in deciding what elements to build and test, and what metrics to use to measure performance and gauge feedback. Each minimum viable product constitutes an experiment to test a hypothesis and progress is typically rapid, taking place in scrum sprints that average 1-2 weeks each.\n\n## The MVP team in action – Tojjar, a real-life example\n\nWith just six weeks to build a **MENA region e-commerce platform** MVP, [Takamol ](https://takamolholding.com/en/)approached Boldare for help. The project was part of Takamol’s 9/10ths business growth program, investor funding was at stake and the deadline was tight. With a clear focus on the highest possible ROI, the investors were looking for Takamol to pitch the product in a startup style, **with a functioning, proven MVP, product roadmap for further development and a full business plan with KPIs.**\n\nTakamol needed a partner who could consult, develop and solve problems quickly.\n\nWithin three days, Boldare was in Dubai for an initial project workshop and rapidly assembled a team and to start work on the product. During the workshop, the team together helped the client to trim down the list of desired features, leaving only the crucial ones to be tested via the MVP.\n\n![Case study of an e-commerce platform MVP mockup designed by Boldare](/img/case-study-tojjar-mvp-mockup.jpg)\n\nThe team delivered the product on time with the result that Takamol secured the investment funding and together, Boldare and the client went on to build a full version of [Tojjar](https://www.boldare.com/work/case-study-tojjar/), the eBay of the Middle East.\n\nThe full web version of Tojjar, and a mobile app, have since been released. The Boldare team continues to work with Takamol, adding new functionalities with every sprint.\n\n\\>> [Read more about Tojjar in our Case Study](https://www.boldare.com/work/case-study-tojjar/)\n\n> The e-commerce project had a very aggressive deployment timeline. We had six weeks to deliver a barebones MVP, and Boldare was the only vendor who was willing to meet that deadline. They were successful, delivering our initial feature-set after a six-week period.\n\n<BlogQuoteAuthor text=\"Development Manager, 9/10ths Programme, Takamol\" />\n\n## The MVP team for your business\n\nProject success can depend on the MVP. At Boldare, our **MVP teams** are carefully chosen to provide a range of expertise, experience and support tailored to each individual client’s project. Furthermore, our broad practical experience in applying the lean startup approach means that we understand the pragmatic use of the MVP to achieve project goals."}],"job":null,"photo":null,"slug":null,"cover":"/img/teamwork.jpg","lead":"Creating a minimum viable product (MVP) is a critical stage in the way we develop products at Boldare. Key to success is the **MVP team**. By ensuring each team has a unique balance of skills and experience, we can provide an extremely rapid and agile development service.","templateKey":"article-page","specialArticle":false,"isNewWork":null,"isNewNormal":null,"service":null,"settings":{"date":"2018-12-18T12:54:55.714Z","slug":"minimum-viable-product-team","type":"blog","slugType":null,"category":"Digital Product","additionalCategories":["Digital Product"],"url":null},"author":"Romuald Członkowski","authorAdditional":null,"box":{"content":{"title":"Minimum Viable Products? It’s all about the team","tileDescription":"The MVP is a core element (perhaps the core element) of our lean startup approach to product development. The minimum viable product is not a prototype. Nor is it a full-scale product ready for market. The MVP is an experiment, a way to test real-life user responses to an aspect of the solution being developed.","coverImage":"/img/teamwork.jpg","tags":null},"coverImage":null,"settings":null,"type":"BLOG"}},"id":"25800c12-fafc-5c39-ac21-19b137e9928b"}},{"node":{"excerpt":"","fields":{"slug":"/blog/product-market-fit-teamworking-for-results/"},"frontmatter":{"title":"Product-Market Fit – teamworking for results","order":null,"content":[{"body":"At Boldare, our success rests solidly on our **teamwork**. Not only how we work together among ourselves but also how closely we work with our clients, effectively creating a single project team composed of both our people and yours.\n\nWhen it comes to the [product-market fit](https://www.boldare.com/services/full-cycle-product-development/) part of the lean startup approach to product development, that teamwork is critical to the successful fine-tuning of your product to make it a ‘must-have’ for your target users.\n\nA Boldare **product-market fit team** is focused on turning your existing product or MVP (minimum viable product) into a saleable product. This involves a close and clear understanding of your target market, the further development of the user experience and sometimes even the addition of fresh features designed to appeal to new customer groups. All new features are tested with real users and the results analyzed to inform the next product iteration.\n\n![Boldare Development Team workshop in Boldare office room](/img/team-workshop.jpeg)\n\n## Quick context: What is product-market fit?\n\nAchieving product-market fit is all about honing your product until you have something customers are willing to pay for (preferably, not only because it works but also because it works better than the competition). Similar to the other elements of the **lean startup approach**, the product-market fit stage is about experimentation and testing, but with a very specific focus: the detailed needs and requirements of your chosen user groups.\n\nA survey by [CB Insights](https://www.cbinsights.com/research/startup-failure-reasons-top/) found that **42% of startup failures** were down to, “no market need” for their product. There are a number of reasons why a project might never get to the point of product-market fit:\n\n* The project runs out of time or money.\n* The project team do not have the skills or expertise to identify, research and understand the market.\n* The project team do not test the product with the right market.\n* There is no market for the product.\n\nThe key to successfully overcoming this obstacle is a clear – and team-wide – focus on the benefits of product-market fit, which include potential profit, sustainability of both product and business, and motivation for the project team (the product is approaching the point of release!)\n\n<RelatedArticle title=\"Product-Market Fit for expanding market demand\" />\n\n## Putting together a product-market fit team\n\nThe accountabilities of a **product-market fit team** can be summarized as:\n\n1. Validating learning (including creating hypotheses, and running experiments to test them)\n2. Analyzing the results and advising on the product development strategy\n3. Engineering the technical architecture of the product that can be adapted or changed quickly\n4. Keeping in mind the technical debt (the cost of future development work which tends to be increased if less-than-optimal, ‘easy’ solutions are used) to ensure an easier transition to the next stage of the development process: scaling and maturity.\n\n![Team workshop](/img/build-measure-learn.png)\n\nTogether with the specific details of the development project, these accountabilities determine the roles necessary in a **high-performing product-market fit team**, including:\n\n* Frontend Developers\n* Backend Developers\n* Quality Engineers\n* DevOps\n* Business Analyst\n* Visual Designer\n* Interaction Designer\n* UX Designer\n* Product Designer\n* Information Architect\n* Qualitative/Quantitative Researcher\n* Digital Strategist\n* Scrum Master\n* Agile Coach\n\nIt’s clear from this list, such teams tend to draw on a wider variety of roles than other stages of the product development cycle due to the necessary blend of technical product skills and market research and understanding.\n\nDepending on the needs of each individual project, the team will employ some or all of the **following tools and techniques**: quality assurance, product-market fit canvas, quantitative research, data visualization and reporting, data architecture, and data analysis.\n\n**The technologies** they may be using to refine the product include Angular, React, Vue.js, JavaScript, HTML, PHP, Java Node.js, Express.js, Python, React Native, Swift, Objective-C, Android (Java), Xamarin (.NET), Python, MongoDB, and PostgreSQL.\n\n![Boldare team](/img/team-working-720.jpeg)\n\nOf course, all this information begs the question, how do we choose the right people to be in such a team. After all, besides the necessary technical skills and knowledge, there’s also a question of putting the ‘right’ people together. With this in mind, we have our own **team selection criteria at Boldare:**\n\n* **Past colleagues** – A new team usually passes through ‘forming’ and ‘norming’ stages in its development; this is normal but not always productive. We find that by including a minimum of two people who have worked together in the past we can skip or shorten the less productive stages and move quickly to ‘performing’ and delivering tangible value.\n* **The perfect combination of skills** – Every Boldare team is selected with a variety of skills in mind; not only the essential technical and engineering skills and knowledge but also the so-called soft skills, including excellent communication and self-organization.\n* **Varied experience levels** – You might imagine a team full of experts with long experience would be ideal. However, we see better results from teams that offer both experience and also the fresh views of a project offered by newer team members.\n\n## **Product-Market Fit team**\n\nWhat skills count the most in a dedicated product-market fit team? Based on our experience, the must-have abilities we always look for when assembling a team for our partners are as follows:\n\n* exceptional data analysis skills\n* the ability to dig deep into product details\n* a close focus on the quality of delivered functionality\n* outstanding, multi-disciplinary technical knowledge \n\n**All of the above is absolutely necessary for all team members - developers, product designers, scrum masters and product strategists.**\n\n## The perfect product-market fit culture\n\nThe individual constituents of any team give rise to a shared set values which, in turn, influence how the members of that team work together. At Boldare, we encourage and foster a strong culture combining:\n\n* Experimentation – while this principle is strongly present throughout the product development process, the point of product-market fit often requires multiple, repeated cycles of experiments, each one a small piece of the whole that must be carefully coordinated and analyzed for the desired outcome to be achieved.\n* A strong focus on the client’s business needs – Again, while it is a constant theme, this focus is particularly strong when working on product-market fit. After all, the business needs (and the product) are an answer to the needs of the market, or at least, a segment of it.\n\n## Benefits of working with a product-market fit team\n\nWorking with a mixed team of experts, knowledgeable in both digital product development and also how to analyze and satisfy a market, means that your existing product or MVP is fine-tuned into a user-pleasing, saleable (and profitable), ready-for-use product.\n\n## The product-market fit team in action – BlaBlaCar, a case study\n\nFrench carpooling platform, BlaBlaCar had 24 million users and a lead position in the marketplace. Wishing to build on this position, the company’s goal was to expand into 27 new countries, with a variety of individual legal and cultural requirements. The secondary objective was to add new and improved features to the app, thus expanding its appeal to potential users who may have been hesitant in the past.\n\nThe final factor in the project was a shift in BlaBlaCar’s branding, moving away from being purely a transport option (a way of getting from A to B) toward being a more social application, focused on sharing your journey with interesting people.\n\n<RelatedArticle title=\"Agile and skilled development teams for BlaBlaCar, a French unicorn\" />\n\nThe Boldare team applied the technique of **funnel optimization**, the ‘funnel’ being the customer journey through BlaBlaCar’s website and app to the point of commitment; in other words, the user experience.\n\nOptimizing that funnel **involved testing each element** – landing page, calls to action, booking process, etc. –   and looking for opportunities for improvement with the goals of boosting user satisfaction, increasing the user population, eliminating any weaknesses in the existing product, and adding genuinely valuable new features. New or enhanced features – for example, a route-planning feature that enables drivers to find more passengers – were then A/B tested against the existing product version with chosen groups of users.\n\n![](/img/blablacar-logo-in-the-office.jpg)\n\n## Key points to remember about the product-market fit team\n\nProduct-market fit is a key goal of the **lean startup approach** to digital product development and the key to success is the team working on it. Drawing on a wide variety of roles and skills, from backend developer to business analyst to researcher, the team carries out a series of fine-tuning experiments, each one contributing to the product’s continuing evolution as it keeps pace with, or anticipates, the market’s needs."}],"job":null,"photo":null,"slug":null,"cover":"/img/team-meeting-1440.jpeg","lead":"Responsible for honing the product to meet the needs and requirements of users, the **product-market fit team** combines analysis and a deep understanding of the client’s market with refined technical and engineering skills. By testing a series of improvements and additions with carefully chosen users, the team guides the product towards both profitability and sustainability.","templateKey":"article-page","specialArticle":false,"isNewWork":null,"isNewNormal":null,"service":null,"settings":{"date":"2018-12-14T11:38:19.252Z","slug":"product-market-fit-team-for-results","type":"blog","slugType":null,"category":"Digital Product","additionalCategories":["Digital Product"],"url":null},"author":"Romuald Członkowski","authorAdditional":null,"box":{"content":{"title":"Product-Market Fit – teamworking for results","tileDescription":"When it comes to the product-market fit part of the lean startup approach to product development, that teamwork is critical to the successful fine-tuning of your product to make it a ‘must-have’ for your target users. So product-market fit team is focused on turning your existing product or MVP (minimum viable product) into a saleable product.","coverImage":"/img/team-meeting-1440.jpeg","tags":null},"coverImage":null,"settings":null,"type":"BLOG"}},"id":"960777c2-f59c-58c3-8323-72557ba6353d"}}]}},"pageContext":{}},
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