Scoping an MVP for small teams

Every audit we run turns up some version of this. Most advice about scoping an MVP assumes a team that does not exist at your size. Here is the version that does not.

Clear scope protects the client at least as much as it protects the agency. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

What to keep

Minimum means uncomfortable, viable means it works. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

What to drop

Process that exists to coordinate ten people is overhead when there are two of you. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it.

Where to start

The point is to learn something specific. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

What this looks like day to day

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
• Cut features, not quality — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you are not sure where your systems currently stand on this, it takes us about an hour to find out.