The greatest example ever of MVP and iterative, incremental development
During a recent Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO) course I attended that was hosted by Scrum On, we covered MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and iterative, incremental development.
During the discussion I mentioned that in my opinion, all the examples I’ve ever encountered for MVP and iterative, incremental development were flawed and irrelevant. I will admit, just like Henrik Kniberg, that I have also gotten it completely wrong and that I previously published an article about RAT (Riskiest Assumption Test) vs MVP (Minimum Viable Product), where the example I gave was completely flawed.
The example I used in the article was as follows:
Nothing in the image depicts MVP or iterative, incremental development. The reason for this is that iterative, incremental development is a combination of both iterative design or iterative method and incrementally building onto a product.
The second example (marked MVP) is most definitely not incremental in any way. Post the first increment, I would would have a bicycle and post my second iteration I would have a motorcycle. How is this incremental? Post my first increment I would not build onto, or add to the bicycle, I most likely would not use one part of bicycle when constructing my motorcycle. The same can be said about the second and third iterations and the third and fourth iterations. I would not incrementally add to the product I delivered in the preceding iteration, instead, I would start from scratch. Definitely not incremental development.
So what is a great example of iterative, incremental development?
The best example I can think of, is a doughnut. At the end of my first iteration (and my MVP) I would create a plain doughnut, as depicted below:
If I were to incrementally add to my doughnut, I would have a glazed doughnut as my product at the end of iteration two. This is true iterative development in that I used the complete product delivered after iteration one and added to it. Also, I can now offer customers two products, the first being a plain doughnut and the second being a glazed doughnut.
Incrementally adding to my doughnut, I would have a glazed doughnut with sprinkles at the end of iteration three.
Lastly, at the end of my fourth iteration, I would have a glazed doughnut filled with custard at the end of iteration four.
To me, this is the greatest example of iterative, incremental development. After the first iteration I had a MVP, and at the end of every subsequent iteration I had incrementally added to the product previously delivered. In addition at the end of each increment, I had a new product offering to go along with the previous products I offered.
If like me, you now feel like a doughnut, please head over to your nearest Krispy Kreme and sample some of their amazing doughnuts, as listed above.
