Scope kills more MVPs than engineering does. Not because the ambition is wrong, because the ambition wasn't translated into a shippable shape. We write scope for every Yo! Launch project using the same template. Here it is.
The five sections
- 1One paragraph describing what a user does with the product on day 1. Not features, behaviour.
- 2The primary user object (User, Account, Team) and one adjacent object they interact with. No more.
- 3The single CRUD flow that has to work end-to-end. Everything else is a wrapper on this flow.
- 4The single integration that must exist (payments, auth, email). Every other integration waits.
- 5The three quality bars: what 'shippable' means, what 'good enough' means, what 'not this sprint' means.
What we cut
- Admin panels. Use the database directly for the first 30 days.
- Onboarding flows longer than one screen.
- Every integration that isn't the primary one.
- Every notification channel except transactional email.
- Every settings page except the one that sets the essential thing.
What we always ship
- Real deploy pipeline, CI, staging, production.
- Error tracking from day 1.
- Analytics from day 1.
- Auth that works, not auth that pretends to work.
- Backups. Yes, even for the MVP.
The single best predictor of shipping on time isn't team size or budget. It's scope discipline in the first week.
Use this template internally, or bring us a rough shape and we'll write the version we'd build against on the scoping call.