With my perfectionist tendencies, I often struggle to create a presentable outcome for my project within a given time frame. Yet, to keep a customer happy, it is of great importance to deliver a satisfactory outcome, even though it is not necessarily the ideal end result. In order to make sure this is the case, an advisable approach is to plan a minimum viable product as a basis and improve it as time allows.
What is the minimum viable Product
A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is an early, basic version of a product that meets the minimum necessary requirements for use but can be adapted and improved in the future. The improvement can take place after feedback is received, especially customer feedback, and its scale may be decided depending on the remaining time available.
Purpose
The ultimate goal of minimum viable products is to keep the time and effort wasted as low as possible. Furthermore, the final product can be designed more accurately to meet the customers’ needs.
Example: Designing a Vehicle (see illustration)
Let's pretend a customer asked you to design a vehicle. However, the final product is not entirely clear. Hence, you create a low-level vehicle first and ask for feedback. Since the customer is not happy with the first product, they ask you to add a steering opportunity to the first vehicle. In the second step, the customer is not unhappy; however, a proper seating opportunity would improve the product. Furthermore, after step 3, they ask for an engine-powered vehicle instead. Now, their satisfaction is already fairly high, and only the change to a four-wheel drive with an open roof will increase this satisfaction even more. If you compare this to the progress above, feedback was difficult to implement due to an unfinished product in all steps before the final product. As a result, optimal customer satisfaction was not reached, and time and effort were wasted to a large extent.
Drawing by Henrik Kniberg