Prototyping service

[sofer]

I am not sure that MVPs without proper quality control are a good idea any more.

There is an argument for upping the price and adding them as a dwyl service.

[nelsonic]

Its a discussion we should have with everyone... We need to have a clear understanding of exactly who is the contract to build the MVP between and who is responsible for maintaining/supporting any MVPs that are built...? We need a well defined initialisation process for all potential MVP clients so everyone is clear what "success" looks like and the scope is well defined.

One of the things we discussed back in March was helping prospective Entrepreneurs/Orgs to do customer development to confirm the need for their idea and to get UAT built-into the MVP process...

[sofer]

@nelsonic agreed with all your points. The questions I am most keen to have answered are: whether dwyl would actually like, in principle, to take the MVP projects under their wing; at what point in the students' learning do you think it would make sense to start on paid projects; what is a reasonable way of managing them so as to make most effective use of dwyl resources; what can we afford to pay the students; and what is a reasonable price for clients to pay after dwyl has also been paid for its time.

[sofer]

After the progress of the last week on the first round of projects, I am more sanguine about the value we are providing and I am enjoying the diversity of approaches people are taking. MVPs done outside dwyl are still a good way (at least for now) of taking the pressure while we find bigger projects for graduates to work on. The bigger concern is with projects that might segue from MVPs into longer projects. We probably need to identify those early and make sure that there is a clear migration path for these kinds of projects. The question of "who is responsible for maintaining/supporting" anything beyond a two-week sprint is key.

[rub1e]

• There is an argument for not even taking on MVPs that definitely won't turn into longer projects
• Re maintenance, I'd say there is no responsibility whatsoever beyond the agreed deliverables. At the rates we're talking about, a client should count themselves as lucky to get what they get in the time - forget about maintenance
  • That said, there is an impact on our and dwyl's brand by extension. Some level of quality control is essential, but I shouldn't have thought it would be a problem if we are clear with clients what service they are receiving (i.e. 2-weeks of work rather than LTS).
• What is the point of MVPs? Just training/experience, or money as well? Because while it's obviously good to be working on projects outside of a classroom environment, there's a sense in which they're not good for training/experience - because you don't really have to deal with the issue of accountability and standing behind the work you do. And when you consider the hours required they're not really good for money either... so what really is the point of them?

[rub1e]

What ever happened to the idea of doing a "Charity MVP week" or something like that?

[sofer]

@rub1e the value of MVPs is that they are self-contained pieces of work that giving students the opportunity to get involved in the whole life-cycle of product development from pitch to delivery and to begin to earn some money while building a portfolio. For the clients they are an inexpensive way to test an idea.

However, it would almost certainly be better for both developers and the clients if more supervision were available for MVPs. There is a good case for doing MVPs under the dwyl umbrella or with dwyl supervision. However, the constraint is the availability of people to take on that responsibility.