UMD, USMx: Achieving Product-Market Fit

• Determining your target customer. It all begins with target customers who will ultimately decide how well your product meets their needs. You should use market segmentation to get specific about who your target customer is.
• Identifying underserved customer needs. After forming your hypothesis about your target customers, the next step is to understand their needs. As you try to create value for customers, you want to identify the specific needs that correspond to a good market opportunity.
• Defining your value proposition. Your value proposition is your plan for how your product will meet customer needs better than the alternatives. Out of all the potential customer needs your product could address, which ones will you focus on with your product?
• Specifying your MVP feature set. Once you are clear on your value proposition, you need to specify what functionality your minimum viable product will include. The MVP approach is aimed at building only what is needed to create enough value in the eyes of your target customer to validate that you are heading in the right direction.
• Creating your MVP prototype. In order to test your MVP hypotheses with customers, you need to show them a version of your product so they can give you feedback on it. You will need to apply user experience (UX) design to bring your feature set to life for your customers.
• Testing your MVP with customers. Once you have your MVP prototype ready, it’s time to test it with customers. It’s important in this step to ensure the people from whom you are soliciting feedback are in your target market..
• Iterating to Improve Product-Market Fit. The Lean Product Process is an iterative process. After analyzing the customer feedback, you want to revise your hypotheses based on what you learned and loop back to an earlier step in the process.

Module 1: Determining Your Target Customer

Module 2: Identifying Underserved Customer Needs

Module 3: Defining Your Value Proposition

Module 4: Specifying Your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Feature Set

Module 5: Creating Your MVP Prototype

Module 6: Testing Your MVP with Customers

Module 7: Iterating to Improve Product-Market Fit