POC vs MVP vs Prototype — Convert Your Idea To A Successful Digital Solution | Systango

Systango
5 min readOct 1, 2020

Having an app idea is the first step in the long process of actually building and releasing a digital product or application in the market. The process of converting your idea into an application can be very confusing especially if you are a startup or new in the tech world. “ Do I need POC development prototype development ? Should I go for an MVP app development POC vs MVP vs Prototype development are some of the common questions we help our clients with.

In this blog, we will help you understand the different methodologies in a product development plan and how implementing them can significantly improve your chances of investor buy-in and funding, reducing overall development costs, and building customer loyalty right from the early stages of your mobile application.

What is a Proof of Concept, POC?

POC development is used to verify your idea and the concept’s feasibility for practicality. The aim here is to answer the question: Can this be built?

What is a Prototype?

Prototype development is nothing but the visualization of the product. Its aim is to define the core user flows and help identify any usability flaws with a focus on user experience. It could be via pen and paper, or a full-interactive product, depending on what you want to test.

What is an MVP, Minimum Viable Product?

With Systango, check the feasibility of your idea, visualise it and build an MVP to gauge user response, generate loyalty and understand revenue opportunities.
Make informed decisions and choose the right way ahead. Get in touch for free consultation!

POC vs MVP vs Prototype — How Systango Took a Product from POC to prototype to MVP?

It’s really not a question of POC vs MVP vs Prototype , at Systango, we believe in POC AND Prototype AND MVP. We have taken many of our clients through the entire product development plan and have noticed that this journey from POC to Prototype to creating an MVP has many benefits. Each of these strategies has its own purpose and objective. Now, let’s look at the entire journey from a POC development to a full-fleshed product for our client — strata alert.

POC Development — We did a 4-week discovery workshop as part of POC development with them to understand what they wanted to build. They were looking for a centralised communication platform for tenants, strata managers, executive committee, and property owners of a building or community. This would enable communication regarding maintenance issues, rent payments, notifications to individuals, groups, or all tenants.

Takeaways From the POC Development

  • Demonstrates feasibility and confirms the potential of your idea
  • Performs a practical implementation test of core features
  • Less cost and time for feature validation
  • Checks feasibility of innovative ideas right in the initial stage
  • Provides a “Can I go ahead?” answer in just — ‘yes’ or ‘no’

So, our client’s idea was validated by analysis of the core features, research about similar products, and feedback from future users.

Prototype — Once we had a proof of concept, we proceeded with prototype development for them. It’s important to determine the project workflow, usability, and features. At Systango, we start with a pen and paper prototype development , followed by a clickable prototype development in InVision or Marvel and then an interactive visual prototype development in HTML/CSS, without any backend.

  • Tenant — Make a maintenance request
  • Strata Manager — Check open issues, and send out notifications

In this stage, we tried to gather feedback on:

  • Are people able to understand the different actions on each page?
  • Are people using the product as we wanted them to?
  • Do users find value in the product?

Takeaways from the Prototype Development

  • Early feedback on the product design
  • Find mistakes in the design phase
  • Increased user interaction because of the design elements
  • Less expensive and fast to get rid of errors and mistakes
  • Represents complex ideas into an understandable product
  • Validation of application flow by business users

Once we had a positive response to our prototype development , we went on for an MVP app development .

MVP — There are two possibilities after the product design and prototype development stage, either you need to make further UI/UX improvements or you can go ahead with MVP app development .

Takeaways from MVP

  • Offers only essential features to keep users satisfied
  • Creates value for users with continuous feedbacks
  • A minimal form of your product
  • Gives valuable insights on how to go-ahead
  • Prevents wastage of time, money and efforts

Have the ability to make a “yes” or “no” decision and move forward accordingly with our team of expert researchers, designers, developers, product managers and QA specialists.
Build digital solutions for your idea today!

Using this approach, you are using only the core functionalities. It will definitely be quicker to build and release as compared to a full-fledged application.

At every stage in this product development, you are testing your idea. You prove your concept, test your prototype development, and then get continuous feedback on your MVP app development . All of this allows for better decision making in terms of investment in the idea.

POC vs MVP vs Prototype

Here’s are the basic differences between the three stages:

Conclusion

Whenever you build a product from scratch, it’s important to go from POC to Prototype to MVP in order to launch a successful product. Everyone from Facebook, Twitter, Amazon went through this product development process. Choosing the right approach and technology partner are at the core of building next-generation digital products.

At Systango, we have a full-cycle team of researchers, developers, UI/UX designers, project managers, and QA specialists to help convert your Idea into an App.

Originally published at https://www.systango.com on May 11, 2020.

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Systango

We are an Award-Winning Digital Engineering & Software Development Studio. We deliver digital experiences and reinvent your applications with modern tech