You have a feature in mind. It’s totally obvious how this solves your customer’s problems. Still it’s pretty tough to predict how and if people really will use it.
A tight feedback loop with your customers helps you to identify this early on. Once a feature is released you figure out how they use the feature and if they really get it. But how can we establish a meaningful feedback loop with our customers? You certainly don’t want to ship in large releases where value accumulates and you delay getting feedback. On the other hand shipping something so small that it doesn’t provide any value creates an overhead.
The answer is to think and make use of Minimum Marketable Features (MMF). It is the smallest set of functionality that provides value to customers.
Keeping it minimal is important to ship something as soon as possible which results in earlier feedback. Still it only works in case we ship something that can be perceived as a valuable change by your customers.
But there is even another benefit involved most people forget about. If your team thinks in MMFs everyone on your team can grasp what a change is about and the amount of work involved for themselves. Doesn’t matter if it is the designer, engineer or even your lawyer.
Tip: A simple rule to figure out if your changes create value for your customer is to ask yourself if this is something you can announce on your product blog or newsletter.
So even a rewrite of a backend component can be a feature if the performance improves. A rewrite which can’t be perceived by the customer in any way and doesn’t speed up the team doesn’t create value and probably doesn’t make sense to work on.
I believe the biggest benefit of thinking in MMFs is that it encourages you to always define why a change is important to your customer.
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