How do you balance the trade-offs between speed, quality, and scope when developing your MVP?

1 What is lean startup?

Lean startup is a methodology that aims to reduce the risk and uncertainty of launching a new product or service by applying the principles of scientific experimentation, customer feedback, and iterative learning. The core idea is to build, measure, and learn from your results, and to pivot or persevere based on the evidence. Lean startup helps you avoid wasting time and resources on features or solutions that nobody wants or needs.

2 What is minimum viable product?

Minimum viable product, or MVP, is a version of your product or service that has enough features or value to satisfy your early adopters or target customers, and to generate feedback for further improvement. The goal of an MVP is not to create a perfect or complete solution, but to test your assumptions and hypotheses about the problem, the solution, and the market. An MVP helps you validate your value proposition and learn from your customers' behavior and preferences.

3 How to define your assumptions and hypotheses?

Before you start building your MVP, you need to define your assumptions and hypotheses about your product or service. These are the statements or questions that you want to test and validate with your MVP. For example, you might have assumptions about who your customers are, what problem they have, how they currently solve it, what value your solution provides, how they will find and use your solution, and how much they are willing to pay for it. You can use tools like the lean canvas or the value proposition canvas to help you articulate and prioritize your assumptions and hypotheses.

4 How to test your assumptions and hypotheses?

Once you have defined your assumptions and hypotheses, you need to design and run experiments to test them with your MVP. Experiments are the methods or techniques that you use to collect and analyze data from your customers or users. For example, you might use surveys, interviews, landing pages, prototypes, beta versions, or analytics to measure and validate your assumptions and hypotheses. You should define your success criteria and metrics for each experiment, and compare your expected and actual results.

5 How to balance speed, quality, and scope?

One of the main challenges of developing an MVP is to balance the trade-offs between speed, quality, and scope. Speed refers to how quickly you can build and test your MVP, quality refers to how well your MVP meets the expectations and needs of your customers or users, and scope refers to how many features or functions your MVP has. Achieving a high level of speed, quality, and scope is ideal, but often requires compromise. To help you balance these trade-offs, focus on the most critical and risky assumptions and hypotheses, and prioritize the features or functions that address them. Use the simplest and cheapest methods or tools to test your assumptions and hypotheses, and avoid over-engineering or over-designing your MVP. Additionally, seek feedback from your customers or users early and often, and use it to improve your MVP and learn from your mistakes. Lastly, be flexible and willing to change or discard your MVP based on the evidence, and do not get attached to your initial idea or vision.