Scoping MVP vs Production System

Overview

An MVP proves value on the happy path. A production system survives traffic spikes, provider outages, bad inputs, and your future self maintaining it. Conflating the two either never ships or ships debt that blocks the next feature.

When to Use

• Kickoff for a new AI surface (assistant, copilot, classifier)
• Stakeholders want "full enterprise" on day one
• Skip when you are hardening something already validated in production

Quick Reference

Implementation

1. Name the one workflow that proves the idea — cut the rest.
2. Write a deferred list with owners — not a silent backlog.
3. Ship behind a flag or to a narrow audience.
4. Define the promotion gate — what eval or metric unlocks production hardening.
5. Schedule hardening sprint after validation — before marketing scales traffic.
6. Avoid permanent MVP — if deferred items never get funded, say so explicitly.

On This Portfolio

Gallery detail pages shipped as static content first; assistant routes stayed dynamic with observability hooks. Knowledge publish flows MVP'd on draft → published status before RAG indexing respected that gate in production.

Common Mistakes

• Building multi-provider failover before anyone uses v1
• No written deferred list — MVP scope becomes permanent
• Skipping eval fixtures because "we'll add tests later"

Related Skills

• Eval harness design
• Failure mode mapping before build
• Problem statement analysis