Ashley Kasper

My personal TL;DR and takeaways from an excellent article you can find here on Medium, combined with my personal experiences and opinions.

TLDR;

If you only have 30 seconds, here are my top takeaways:

1. Reduce scope to the minimum viable product, and get that bad boy launched. Collect user feedback to determine which features or enhancements to prioritize next.
   • My 2 cents: Your MVP should launch in a pilot phase within 3 months. Over my 8 years of building and launching products and features, I’ve found 3 months to be the sweet spot. I know, there are many gray areas in this statement, but I’ve worked on some seriously complex projects, and if they can launch in 3 months, so can you.
   • “Launch” is layered. Your first launch should be a pilot. Identify 5-10 ideal customers and launch to them only, for their feedback. DO NOT commercial launch without first collecting feedback, and iterating on the MVP. Not doing this can forever stain the brand and that’s hard to come back from.
2. MLP > MVP – aka Minimum LOVEABLE product vs Minimum Viable Product. People don’t buy annual subscriptions to your app because it’s viable. Ew, David. Ideally, your “commercial” scale launch (aka general availability aka available to all) will be the MLP. Tell your boss this every time you meet. Make sure leadership and stakeholders know that the work IS NOT DONE after initial pilot launch. Hell, it won’t be done after the MLP. You’ve just launched the absolute MINIMUM. Minimum is far from great. Make sure your roadmap includes capacity for enhancements, and define WHEN MLP will be achieved. OVERCOMMUNICATE THIS. Say is every time you meet to discuss. They will still likely forget, but you’ve got to try.
3. Requirements have layers. Each line item can expand into 3 more line items. It’s easy to become overwhelmed. The ability to PRIORITIZE (the right things) and the willingness to ITERATE are two product managers superpowers.
   • Don’t over scope your first launch. You can spend 12 months building, and build the wrong thing.
   • You can also launch in 3 months, and Leadership will assume that’s the whole kit-and-caboodle and push you to the next project. RESIST! You’re not done!