Stage One:

Excitement

It’s the beginning of a project and everyone’s excited. The sky is the limit! There are no concerns about timeline, budget, and the competition…yet. Stage one belongs to the dreamers.

The team comes together with an infectious optimism to start diving head-first into the project:

The Team

Visionary: The visionary comes to the table with the business plan and the vision to make their dreams a reality. While they’re not always a development or design expert, they are the driving force behind the project.

Tech Lead: That’s you (or me)! The tech lead handles building the MVP. Being a tech lead is empowering. You have the last say on all things technical, while keeping an ear to the ground to make sure they stay focused on what the visionary values.

Product Owner: The intermediary. The PO speaks some tech jargon, and more importantly, can gauge things like timeline and budget. PO’s run interference between the delivery team and the visionary. They can discuss tech changes to both sides of the fence (technical and non-technical).

Such a Thrill

Getting these roles together in a room for a new project is a thrill! There’s so much potential at this moment. Every role is empowered to contribute, and completely unencumbered by limitations.

Right now, your MVP is a blank canvas. It’s shapeless and limitless; Everything and nothing. It’s endless potential, tempered only by a tiny realization that one day you’re going to actually have to build it. One day, people will have to use it.

What Happens

While you can’t document every detail of the project in stage one, you do get a sense of the general problems your MVP solves. In stage one, you begin to understand who you audience is and what their goals are.

These are the assumptions you’ll be able to rely on through the project. They are especially important as your begin to decide where to start as a tech lead.

What frameworks will you use?

What back-end technology is a good fit?

What features are going in first?

What (if any) supplemental team members are needed?

Keep It Short

Since you’re (hopefully) using some form of an agile methodology, this stage should be pretty short-lived. Once you get enough warm and fuzzy feelings and a couple core assumptions to operate on, it’s time to get started building the damn thing.