Before you invest in scoping an MVP

This is one of those topics that looks small until it costs you something. Before you spend anything on scoping an MVP, it is worth confirming a few things are already true.

Clear scope protects the client at least as much as it protects the agency. The practical test is whether someone new to the project could tell, in a minute, that it had been handled.

Prerequisites

• You can describe the outcome you want in one sentence
• Someone owns it after the work is done
• Minimum means uncomfortable, viable means it works
• You have a way to tell whether it worked

What to watch for

Cut features, not quality. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

The point is to learn something specific. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.

The short version

The projects that go badly are rarely the ones with the hardest technical problems. Three things worth confirming about scoping an MVP before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• The point is to learn something specific — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Worth checking on your own setup before it becomes someone else's problem to fix.