I’ve abandoned "MVP"
I find that the "maker" side of software companies and the "go-to-market" side of software companies have irreconcilable definitions of MVP.
The online whiteboard of Kristofer Palmvik
When developers can personalize their specific tasks/stories by directly connecting their work to emotional reactions of users, they create intrinsic motivation to focus on outcomes, solve problems better, and build great products. IMHO, the top motivator for developers is a direct emotional connection between story-level work and individual user happiness.
By investing first in single customer requests, we’re trading away our ability to plan and architect products for a broad market. We’re hiding custom projects in our licensing model. We’re paying employees to undermine our success. We’re failing to charge market rates for real value.
AI-washing is quickly announcing and shipping something (anything!) that can be labeled AI or machine learning or LLM-ish or generative. Releasing something shows that we’re not asleep; gives our execs something AI-ish to talk about with customers; and satisfies less astute investors worried that we’ll miss out on sky-high valuations.
My observation is that most (B2B) CPOs are in messy, politically complex, sales-led, short-term-revenue-driven companies. Yet they take that as personal failure.
So anything we build for just one customer is “custom.” Any new bit of logic or deviation from standard data handling is a “special.” Agreeing to generate/send unique daily reports for one buyer is “bespoke.” Creating a new SKU or licensing model for a new customer is a “one-off.” These are usually accompanied by evidence-free arguments that dozens of other major customers need exactly the same thing, implemented in exactly the same way.
Before we start crunching financials, we should know which kind of money story we are telling. Who is it for? How much is it worth to them? How sure are we that they will use/buy it? Can we ballpark benefits versus costs?