Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is often referred with startups. The concept is to develop minimal features which ideally should have core functionality, just enough for the user to give feedback. It may not be very fancy and user experience focused. In product development, feedback provides direction for further work and growth.
Here I m sharing my experience. The idea of MVP (minimal viable project in the context of D365 & Power Platform) is a more agile way of delivering, especially when clients are new to these technologies. Yes, it benefits projects of any scale in any industry with almost all types of customers. Advantages are it enables the delivery of a valuable working system in quickest possible time and cost, and of course, it mitigates the risks.
Here are a few learnings while using this concept:
- While developing MVP do not focus a lot on fancywork. Key is to take user feedback, communicate and demonstrate what will be ultimate user experience. I m a big fan of user experience, making system easy to use and adopt, but it shouldn’t be a priority while developing the core.
- Initially, the focus should be just core functionality. If for doing something a workaround is available, use it instead of developing everything in the first go.
- Client and end-user may not have requirements ready, help them by understanding their needs, showing and suggesting ideas.
- An introduction level basic training of D365 can help user understanding system capabilities, communicate and visualize their requirements.
- If building core functionality has dependencies, try to sort them out in advance to avoid frustration and to have a smooth ride.
- Just like user experience don’t focus on implementing CI-CD and other time-consuming practices in the beginning.
- Start small, go in iterations. The first version has not to be 100 % what user is looking, but at least the user will have something to see and visualize their needs.
I hope you will find these tips useful. Please share in comments if you have used this approach, any tips or thoughts.
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Yawer Iqbal 
Nice article. I’m a big fan of the MVP approach. You get early validation from the client and users that you are on the right track. User adoption starts early in the project. While the MVP will be far from perfect, the client also gets the chance to see real benefits early rather than having to wait for the perfect final product. From a Dynamics perspective, Model-Driven apps make it very quick and easy to get an MVP up and running.
Hi Hamish, I completely agree with what you have have said. Also I found clients are more satisfied with this. Thank you for appreciating and sharing your thoughts.