The core concept of minimum viable product (MVP) is to get maximum learning and understanding regarding what customers want about a product. Learning and understanding is a continuous process requiring a development process that is incremental in nature. That makes DevOps a favorite for CIOs and everyone else who dabbles with MVP development.
How can DevOps help in accelerating MVP development?
Any MVP is built with assumptions about customer preferences in mind. Developers may have a deep understanding of what customers want, but they have no solid proof. The MVP “tests the waters” and measures the depth of the customer reaction. Developers then can develop and refine the application further, depending on the customer responses.
Building an MVP that can be easily updated is no easy task, however, especially if the MVP juggles too many APIs that collect data from heavy databases. Traditional application development tactics may not work here. It is here that DevOps makes a difference. Its continuous integration and continuous delivery (CICD) tools ensure that any application or MVP can be easily updated according to dynamically changing scenarios.
In other words, DevOps can help accelerate MVP development.
Microservices is a concept in DevOps where the application is broken down into several loosely held parts. For instance, when a social media app is being built, its various components such as a newsfeed, stories, chabot, etc., are built separately as microservices.
The prime benefit of microservices is that the updating, maintenance and bug-fixing process is simplified and easy to manage. For MVP, this translates into easier editing of feature sets to meet changing customer preferences. Also, it breeds an organizational culture of collaboration in which developers as well as applications have to mingle with each other to perform better. Such a collaborative environment is key to accelerated development of MVP.
DevOps and automation go hand in hand. In fact, zero-touch automation is deemed to be the future of DevOps. Right from continuous business planning to feedback optimization, there is plenty of scope in MVP for automation.
Needless to say, automation drives operational agility. It also quickens the pace at which routine tasks are done. DevOps adoption for MVP development means developers can make more features and deployments faster within a short span of time.
Infrastructure as code, or IAC, is a key DevOps practice. It works by configuring servers automatically, especially cloud-based servers. IAC works by creating a single configuration file for all the servers. It is like a single template of configuration that can be cloned easily for several servers.
As a result, DevOps allows applications to quickly ramp up their server capacity in a flash. The same goes for MVP: When the MVP gets the nod of consent and is mature for advanced development, the same server setup can be used as a foundation for upscaling the resources. Also, the same configuration file can be used to set up as many as servers as you want. What is the result? Cloud servers up and ready to use without loss of time.
Deploying a MVP is an integral part of the development process. DevOps, with its microservices and IAC approach, can help accelerate the pace at which applications are developed and deployed. Additionally, CI/CD tools ensure wide-scale collaboration among teams.
Integrating a DevOps culture right from the MVP stage of an application will help in the development of a final product that is bespoke to customer requirements. Even if the customer requirements are different, microservices help to quickly modify them and update the application without significant downtime. To sum it up, DevOps is the perfect approach to accelerate MVP development.
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