Prioritizing MVP Scope: Working Tips and Tricks

Every product is created with a specific purpose, whether solving an unmet problem, offering a more efficient way of doing things, or delivering a unique customer experience. When business owners envision a product that could impact the market, they often start thinking about all the possible features that would make the product stand out and deliver maximum value. But you should start with something smaller. Book a call, get advice from DATAFOREST, and move in the right direction.

Assembling the Team and Defining the MVP

Once the product concept is ready, the next step is assembling the team responsible for implementing the solution. The business can either hire in-house developers or partner with a reliable software development agency to consult on the best technical solution. The organization needs to estimate the project size and timeline to decide whether to proceed. It's helpful to provide developers with at least a high-level product description to allow them to estimate the efforts. Delivering all the necessary details upfront may be challenging, so the project sponsor and developers should agree on what is required minimum—"just enough" information to provide a rough estimate. A Project Manager can also assist in calculating the project budget and building a timeline. From there, the business owner can make an informed decision on whether to move forward.

It is not news that most projects have time and budget constraints; it's essential to reassess the product's scope. While removing certain features or agreeing on trade-offs may be difficult, it often makes sense, even when resources aren't limited. Before investing heavily, testing the product's value hypothesis is crucial to ensure it will attract customers and survive in the market. Business Analysts (BA) can be instrumental here in shaping the product concept and helping prioritize features for the MVP (Minimum Viable Product). They can assist in determining which features are essential for testing the product's viability before significant investment in development.

Additionally, long development cycles before launch may allow competitors to release similar products and capture the market niche first. For these reasons, developing an MVP is a common practice for startups, allowing for quicker market entry and hypothesis validation before scaling further. DATAFOREST will do the same; you need to arrange a call.

What Stands Behind MVP?

MVP (Minimum Viable Product) refers to a product version that includes only essential features to validate the business idea and test its feasibility. It helps minimize resources while ensuring core functionality is delivered. Non-essential or "nice-to-have" features are deferred for future iterations. The goal of the MVP is to gather user feedback and assess the product’s viability as early as possible.

However, it’s common for business owners to struggle with prioritizing features for the MVP. Often, they feel that everything is critical and must be included immediately. In such cases, involving a Business Analyst can be highly beneficial. Business Analysts can help objectively prioritize features based on business goals and user needs, ensuring that only the most important functionality is included in the MVP.

How to Determine an MVP Scope?

Composing an MVP is a complex process that requires a detailed analysis, but some techniques and standard practices could give you an idea of what to consider during this activity.

Step 1. Determine Business Goals and Objectives

Each new product is developed with specific business goals in mind, such as increasing profit, streamlining internal processes, improving customer satisfaction, or driving positive societal impact. These goals provide a high-level vision and direction for the product's development.

From these goals, business objectives are derived. Objectives are concrete, measurable outcomes that your organization aims to achieve through the initiative. When setting these objectives, it's crucial to use the SMART principle: objectives should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.

Business objectives are fundamental to defining the MVP scope. For example:

• If one objective is to launch the product within a year, this sets a clear timeline for MVP delivery and helps determine the number of features that can be included.
• A second objective might be to commercialize the product within two years, postponing less critical features, like payments, in the initial MVP and focusing instead on features aligned with key business goals.

This alignment ensures that development efforts stay on track with long-term business success.

Step 2. Understand your users

Before starting product development, it's crucial to identify and understand both customers and users. Many businesses focus only on customers—those who pay for the product or service—but this can be a mistake if customers and users are different groups. It's also essential to consider users' needs because if the product isn't user-friendly or valuable to them, it won't succeed, regardless of who pays for it.To define your users, start with a brainstorming session with your team to generate as many ideas as possible. Once you’ve identified potential user types, group and prioritize them. Then, analyze these user groups by asking key questions:

• What is the primary role of the product for these users?
• What problems or challenges do they face, and what product can fix them?
• What do they like or dislike about similar products?

If possible, directly interview or observe your users to gather real insights. However, even if you are working with assumptions, developing user personas—detailed profiles that represent your ideal users—is a powerful tool to guide product development and ensure it meets the needs of the people who will actually use it.

Understanding users at this stage will help you build a product that resonates with them and enhances business success. If you find this process challenging, a Business Analyst can assist you and your team.

Step 3. Align User Needs with Your Product Offering

Users will have various needs and problems, and it’s nearly impossible to address them all. To effectively prioritize, business owners must consider key factors:

1. Alignment with the product vision: Focus on user needs that align with your product’s overall direction and purpose.
2. Feasibility: Evaluate which problems can realistically be solved with your available resources, expertise, and time.
3. Business impact: Prioritize user needs directly supporting your business goals and objectives.

A helpful tool at this stage is the Business Objective Model. This model allows you to map out how each user problem aligns with both your business objectives and the solutions your product can offer. The result is a high-level product concept that includes key features, ensuring the product is user-centric and business-focused.

This approach ensures that you focus on developing features that meet user needs and contribute to the business's success.

Step 4. Prioritize the scope

Once you define a high-level list of features based on user needs and your business objectives, it would be a good idea to visualize the scope before proceeding with prioritization. A user story map is helpful for this task, as the first level could have bigger features (epics), and the lowest level could contain cards that represent details of the features (user stories). It is expected to put the most important features at the top, and those not included in the MVP can be placed at the bottom, divided from the main scope by the horizontal line.

During the prioritization, you should consider the following factors:

1. Risk. If your project includes a highly complex feature critical to the business, it's wise to tackle it early on. This helps avoid spending time and resources on other tasks if the core functionality is unworkable. However, if the feature carries significant risks but offers limited business value, it's better to exclude it from the project altogether.
2. Business value. When prioritizing tasks, it's common to focus on those with the highest value and smallest size. For scoring each feature, you might apply decision-making techniques like the Delphi method or Multivoting, allowing the team to collaboratively reach a consensus on priorities.
3. Define dependencies. There are two key types of dependencies: technical and logical.‍

• ‍Technical dependencies dictate the order of development. If there is a technical dependency between features, it means feature B cannot be built without completing feature A first due to technical constraints.‍
• Logical dependencies occur when one feature loses its purpose if another related feature is excluded. For example, including a subscription system in the MVP wouldn't make sense if the feature designed to promote subscriptions is removed. Both features must coexist for the functionality to provide value to the users.

Mastering MVP Scope

Defining the MVP scope may seem challenging, but it is a crucial process that helps mitigate product delivery risks and user acceptance risks. We offer a Discovery service where we guide you through all the steps, from validating business goals to creating a roadmap based on priorities and dependencies. Our team brings industry expertise and experience to provide recommendations on effectively shaping your MVP scope. It's essential to emphasize the value of Business Analysis (BA) in this process, as it helps structure requirements, assess risks, and set clear priorities for building a successful product. Please complete the form, and let's do the most we can with the least means.

FAQ

What is MVP, and why does it matter for business?

An MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is the simplest version of a product with just enough features to solve a core problem and gather user feedback. It matters for businesses because it allows them to test their product idea quickly and cost-effectively, reducing the risk of developing something users don't want. By validating the product's value early on, businesses can make informed decisions on improving, pivoting, or scaling their offering.

How do you choose an MVP scope correctly?

To choose an MVP scope correctly, focus on identifying the core problem your product aims to solve and select only the essential features that address that problem. Involve stakeholders, including Business Analysts, to prioritize features based on business goals, user needs, and the potential impact on validation. Keep the scope lean by avoiding “nice-to-have” features and ensuring each element directly contributes to testing your product’s value proposition.

Describe an example where defining the MVP scope is illustrative.

Imagine a startup developing a fitness app to help users build personalized workout routines. Instead of launching with advanced features like social sharing, nutrition tracking, and video tutorials, the MVP scope focuses solely on a basic workout planner and progress tracker. This approach allows the startup to validate the core idea—whether users find value in a customizable workout tool—before investing in additional features, reducing risks, and guiding future development based on real user feedback.