I have previously written about the confusions around what an MVP actually is (or should be). This is an extension of it.
Extending an existing product can be hard. You have to account for the existing product, existing users, expectations, assumptions, etc. With that comes the pressure to get it absolutely right.
You do need to get it right.
However, here’s the point that you need to remember:
You don’t need to get everything right at one time. What you have to do is to pick one feature. One. Make it beautifully polished and deliver that. One. At. A. Time.
It makes little sense to increase your footprint before you need and before you can polish it.
But you might be thinking...what about building it as complete as possible AND polishing it very well?
Well...as you can imagine, something will have to give. And what gives is usually time and resources.
When the scope increases, the time it takes usually increases exponentially. What that means in practice is that no user benefits from anything until you are fully done.
More is definitely not better. Better is better.
You might be thinking: “Yes, we can do that, but it wouldn’t be a very useful thing”. And you are probably correct. A first release, or any individual release for that matter will probably not be terribly life-changing by itself. But it compounds.
What releasing small and polished allows for is for:
The product will not be very different after that single release. But it will be vastly improved after you do a hundred small ones in a couple of months time. That is the beauty of it.
Jorge