I have been applying the lean MVP approach for product delivery in many organisations; from startups and smaller ventures to large corporations. Lately I came to the realisation that large corporations have a tendency to track requirements or product plans way beyond the MVP.
The minimum viable product is very well suited for small and large corporations. But, typically, large corporations have something else to take care off: some existing list of requirements. Some list of desirable features or requirements existed before thinking about the product MVP. And the combination of such existing list of requirements and this new MVP product evolution style can be challenging.
For this reason I started working with something I call the remaining required product, or RRP for short. Basically this is the list of whatever else is required for the product, besides what is already planed for the MVP and its increments.
In a pure lean world these are not required but the reality I have been facing is that the large organisations don’t have such lean and agile manners yet. Therefore MVP and RRP construction plans have to coexist.
The Lean Inception book show how to understand and build a plan for evolving a product via the MVP. But it does not say a thing about RRP. My recommendations is for RRP to be treated as a separate backlog of work. Then, when the team is doing a release or a Sprint planing, it’ll be very clear: an item is either from the MVP or the RRP backlog.
It feels weird, I have to confess. It is like saying: “and here is the minimum with a little more”. But I rather be totally honest and classify it clearly: “This is MVP, and that is RRP”. At least the planing will reflect the reality for many corporations that — for one reason or another — cannot be leaner yet.
