MVP Milestones
Follow these guidelines for your product team to ensure you're planning the correct milestones in your MVP product development.
Last updated
Follow these guidelines for your product team to ensure you're planning the correct milestones in your MVP product development.
Last updated
There can be multiple MVPs on the way to an MMP release. Each MVP builds upon the last, and solves incrementally more problems for end-users. To achieve an MVP release, multiple milestones should be delivered: initial discovery, continuous discovery, vision, design requirements, development requirements, and release cycle planning.
MVP's should iteratively deliver user value; products should not deliver all the value in one single release. Teams should start with the riskiest assumptions and work to validate through each release. MVP's offer a chance to try things and learn by getting them into the hands of users.
Here's a breakdown of MVP milestones. For each milestone, the following is provided:
How they are defined
Who's involved
Pre-requisites
Timeline
Deliverable checklist
Initial discovery involves the up-front definitions of a product and sets up future planning. It involves exploring what's out there to understand the state of the world and the market in order to strategize around the decisions you'll make for your product.
Problem statements (Product Strategy team)
Competitive / comparative analysis
Market analysis (if applicable)
Proto-personas
Empathy maps (if applicable)
User journey maps
Exploratory research results and recommendations
Concept test results and recommendations
Product strategy - Product strategy team owns the backlog, makes deliverables, facilitates meetings, and prioritizes UX work during the initial discovery milestone.
UX research - UX research team works together with the product strategy and UX design team to perform research during discovery.
UX design - Just like the UXR team, UX design team works together with the product strategy and UX research team to perform research during discovery. UXR and UXD teams are essentially “combined”, working as one whole team during discovery milestones.
Initial discovery can take weeks or months depending on the team. Teams can learn incrementally about the state of the users' world and the market through iterative research results which build upon each other.
A team is ready for continuous discovery milestone after they have finished their initial discovery milestone deliverables.
Vision describes where a product is going, and is broken down by release. When forming an MVP vision, product teams seek to solve the most important problems in their problem space. They should define MVP's in such a way that they are able to learn from them and vet high risk items in their product plans early and often. The vision helps the team stay aligned or decide how to adjust where their product is going.
MVP 1 Vision Boards (one per audience)
MVP 1 Scope
Drafted MMP Vision Boards (one per audience)
Drafted MMP Scope
Product strategy - Product strategy team owns the vision formation and deliverables, but must consult and collaborate with the UX team in order to ensure it will be aligned with both business value and user need.
UX research - UX research team consults in the vision by way of research results and recommendations from the initial and continuous discovery milestones.
UX design - UX design team consults in the vision based on the ideal user experience and research results.
There is no set timeline for vision as long as the deliverables are holistically delivered. Once delivered, teams should treat them as "drafts" that they change and refine as they continue performing discovery, research, and validation.
Initial discovery must be completed first. Deliverables like the competitive analysis, problems that users face, and proto-personas are key to strategically forming vision that solves the biggest problems for your product, and provides unique value to the market.
Continuous discovery is a non-stop iterative learning cycle about your product and your users. Teams simply explore areas iteratively, reflect on what they learn, and adjust their plans based on their progress. Continuous discovery milestones never stop, rather they evolve over time.
Refined Vision Boards
Refined scope
Exploratory research results and recommendations
Concept test results and recommendations
Evaluative research results and recommendations
Refined user personas
Empathy maps
User journey maps
Product strategy - Product strategy team owns the backlog, makes deliverables, facilitates meetings, and prioritizes UX work during the initial discovery milestone.
UX research - UX research team works together with the product strategy and UX design team to perform research during discovery.
UX design - Just like the UXR team, UX design team works together with the product strategy and UX research team to perform research during discovery. UXR and UXD teams are essentially “combined”, working as one whole team during discovery milestones.
A team is ready for continuous discovery milestone after they have finished their initial discovery milestone deliverables.
Continuous discovery never stops through an MVP because teams continue iterating on the latest results of discovery. Doing continuous discovery allows teams to refine their vision and produce stronger releases that are more aligned with business need and user need over time. They are able to check risky assumptions well before developing or releasing full products to end-users, which saves time and money.
Design requirements deliver the details that a UX designer needs to create prototypes and design specs. They document who the feature is for, what user goals should be achieved, when in the product it should be offered, where in the product it should be offered, why it brings value, and how the logic should be handled. This enables the UX design team to deliver work that's efficient and aligned to the vision.
Features
Epics
Technical architecture specifications
Prioritized release plans
Individual design work items with:
User Story statements
Acceptance criterion
Problem statements
Work item scope
Use case scenarios
Task flows for features in scope
Research results and recommendations for design
Product strategy - Product strategy teams write, review, and deliver design requirements.
UX research - UX research teams consult in the design requirements because their research results inform the decisions that people need to make in order to write requirements.
UX design - UX design teams consult in the design requirements and are often part of the review or refinement of them. UX teams may create the task flows to detail the interaction design required (which also requires requirements documentation handed to them).
In order to achieve design requirements, the vision and initial discovery should be at a point where things are clearly aligned and able to move ahead. They do not need to be complete before design requirements begins, but the design requirements should closely follow the vision and scope to avoid wasted work.
Design requirements are passed off to design teams, and should be iterative in nature. Design requirements are complete when all requirements that are in scope of the MVP are documented.
Development requirements deliver the details that a developer needs to finish developing. They document who the feature is for, what user goals should be achieved, when in the product it should be offered, where in the product it should be offered, why it brings value, and how the logic should be handled. This enables the UX design team to deliver work that's efficient and aligned to the vision.
Features
Epics
Technical architecture specifications
Prioritized release plans
Individual development work items with:
User Story statements
Acceptance criterion
Problem statements
Work item scope
Use case scenarios
Refined task flows
Design annotations
High fidelity prototypes
Design system / UI kit
Product strategy - Product strategy teams write, review, and deliver design requirements.
UX research - UX research teams consult in the design requirements because their research results inform the decisions that people need to make in order to write requirements.
UX design - UX design teams consult in the design requirements and are often part of the review or refinement of them. UX teams may create the task flows to detail the interaction design required (which also requires requirements documentation handed to them).
In order to achieve design requirements, the vision and initial discovery should be at a point where things are clearly aligned and able to move ahead. They do not need to be complete before design requirements begins, but the design requirements should closely follow the vision and scope to avoid wasted work.
Development requirements are passed off to development teams, and should be iterative in nature. Development requirements are complete when all requirements that are in scope of the MVP are documented.
Development is the act of coding designs or technical architecture and allowing products to be used by end-users in the real world.
Coded features
Code documentation
Development - Development teams perform coding activities to complete the development milestone.
Product strategy - Product strategy teams consult developers and review code during development milestone.
UX design - UX design teams consult developers and review code during development milestone.
In order to enable development milestones, the design requirements and development requirements should be documented, reviewed, and prioritized.
Development timelines should be iterative and broken down per-feature. Each time a feature gets developed, the feature MVP's should be quickly delivered into the hands of users and feedback should be collected to inform the next feature MVP.
Although testing should be continuous on agile teams, the MVP testing milestone involves evaluating what's been delivered in the MVP scope as a whole.
MVP test plan
Evaluative research results and recommendations
Product strategy - .
UX research -
UX design -
