How to Speed Up MVP Development with GPT-4

Less than 15 years ago, typically spent years building products before releasing them. Today, they sprint to get a minimum viable product (MVP) out as soon as possible, all under the heading of the lean startup. 

Eric Ries introduced the concept in September 2011 with his book The Lean Startup. By 2013, Harvard Business Review reported that the lean startup movement hadn't yet gone mainstream. But today, it's the de facto standard by which startups operate: Hit the floor running and don't stop. 

"Faster and cheaper is better" in the lean startup methodology, and GPT-4 makes it possible to develop MVPs faster and much cheaper, provided you know how to do it.

GPT-4: The basics

GPT-4 is OpenAI's latest iteration of its Generative Pre-trained Transformer language model, a language model trained extensively by humans to improve its ability to predict the next word in a sentence accurately. 

No official statement exists on how many parameters were used to train GPT-4, but it's rumored to be 1 trillion, which is almost 10 times more than GPT-3. 

GPT-4 can process text, images, and video, whereas GPT-3.5 can only process text. 

During the GPT-4 demo, OpenAI's president, Greg Brockman, showed how GPT-4 can create a fully functioning website from a diagram on a piece of paper. The website wasn't much to look at, but it did demonstrate the immense power of this model. 

GPT-4 is available in a limited-functionality version through ChatGPT+, a paid version of ChatGPT. You'll need access to the GPT-4 API, which currently has a waiting list, to achieve the full functionality described below, including the ability to process images.

The product development process

To demonstrate GPT-4's potential in speeding up MVP development, we'll use Browserbite's development process as our model. 

At Browserbite, we use the following development process for MVPs: 

• Discovery sprint

• Technical scoping and tech stack selection

• Product roadmap creation

• Brand and product design

• Development and coding

• Testing and quality assurance (QA)

• Deployment and launch

Let's see how GPT-4 can speed up each of these points. 

Accelerating the discovery process with GPT-4

A product discovery sprint aims to reduce the risk and uncertainty associated with launching a new product. The team involved uses a structured process to quickly identify, validate, and prioritize opportunities related to the product. 

GPT-4 can significantly accelerate this process because of its enormous data processing capabilities. 

Speeding up customer, market, tech, and business analysis:

GPT-4 can quickly analyze large volumes of data from various sources, such as customer feedback, market research, competitor analysis, and technology trends. It can help identify gaps, unmet needs, and potential areas for innovation more efficiently than manual analysis.

Facilitating ideation and prioritization:

GPT-4 can generate new ideas and potential opportunities based on the analyzed data. It can evaluate and prioritize these ideas using specific criteria like feasibility, desirability, and potential impact, reducing the time taken for manual evaluations.

Enhancing validation and prototyping:

GPT-4 can assist in designing and refining prototypes and even generating code snippets for rapid prototyping. It can analyze customer interviews and surveys quickly and accurately, providing valuable feedback for idea validation.

GPT-4 in product-building

Once the discovery phase is complete and you know your product's direction, the Product Building Phase begins. 

How GPT-4 can aid in technical scoping and tech stack selection:

GPT-4 accepts 32,000 tokens—roughly 25,00 words—of input. That equates to about one-third of a typical paperback novel, which should be more than enough for it to process large chunks of data and come to a conclusion. 

Based on the data you provide it, GPT-4 can help you scope the project by:

• Analyzing project requirements and constraints

• Recommending suitable technologies or frameworks based on the analysis

• Evaluating and comparing technology options

• Identifying potential technology-related challenges, but also proposing solutions

At Browserbite, we strongly prefer JavaScript because of its extreme flexibility and because you can use it in both a backend and frontend context. If your company has a language preference, you can prompt GPT-4 to select only frameworks using that language, or to strongly prefer that language in its choice. 

GPT-4's role in developing product roadmaps:

Once you establish the language and framework, GPT-4 can help you break down project goals into smaller tasks and milestones. You can feed it the entire project (up to 32,000 tokens) and ask it to output the task list, broken down by team or task-type.

You can even ask GPT-4 to carry out the complex task of correlating roadmaps between teams so that each team knows what dates to meet specific targets. 

As the project's requirements evolve, you can ask GPT-4 to update the roadmap accordingly. 

Leveraging GPT-4 for brand and product design:

GPT-4's ability to design products is a game-changer. 

The quality of any GPT model's output is directly attributable to:

• The model you're using

• The quality and specificity of the prompt

The GPT-4 launch event demo of converting notes into a full-fledged website showed that GPT-4 has the ability, but the prompt needed work. The resulting website was of awful quality, and not very useful for teams that have developers in-house. 

By correctly prompting GPT-4, you can use it to:

• Generating design concepts

• Create wireframes, mockups, and interactive prototypes

• Providing design suggestions and improvements based on user feedback

GPT-4's potential in development and coding:

GPT-4's coding skills are one of its top skills. You can leverage it for all manner of coding tasks, from pair programming to code review. 

Enhancing testing and QA using GPT-4:

GPT-4 can help with testing and QA in the following ways: 

• Assisting in creating test cases based on project requirements

• Identifying potential test scenarios and edge cases

• Analyzing test results to pinpoint issues and suggest improvements

• Generating automated test scripts

GPT-4's contributions to deployment and launch:

When you're ready to launch your MVP, GPT-4 can help you create a deployment plan, identify potential deployment issues, and generate documentation. GPT-4 can also help you create a content strategy you can send to writers and graphic designers to turn into powerful content to market your new MVP. 

Lean methodology has never been leaner

GPT-4 has given the lean startup methodology a massive step forward. Humans still run the show at Browserbite, but we're actively investigating how to intelligently and securely leverage GPT-4 to maximize productivity. 

Any AI work needs to get side-checked by human experts. But the potential of this technology is enormous. And if using it makes sense for our clients, we'll be trailblazing MVP development with GPT-4 as soon as possible. 

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For more information about how Browserbite helps companies develop products faster, check out our case studies page. And to learn how Browserbite can help you get out an MVP as fast as possible, book a call with us for more information.