The MVP Engineering Playbook: Ship a Useful 0→1 in 6 Weeks

A practical scope, sprint, and CI/CD blueprint any small team can copy.

Why another MVP guide?

Most MVPs fail from scope creep, fragile infrastructure, or slow feedback loops—not from lack of ideas. This guide focuses on a minimal but reliable path to get real users touching a real product quickly, with just enough quality gates to avoid rewrites.

Week 0: Define “done” and remove uncertainty

• Problem statement in one sentence
• Three primary use cases
• One success metric (e.g., first task completion or first payment)
• Non‑negotiables: auth, audit logs, basic observability, backups
• Nice‑to‑haves explicitly parked

Artifacts: a one‑page PRD and a simple system sketch (client → API → DB → third‑party).

Weeks 1–2: Ship a running skeleton

• Repos: monorepo or two (web/mobile + API)
• Choose boring, proven stack (e.g., Next.js/React + Node/Laravel + Postgres)
• Implement: auth, roles, seed data, feature flags, error tracking, health checks
• Deploy to staging by day 3

Quality gates: lint, unit tests for core domains, pre‑commit hooks, CI under 10 minutes.

# .github/workflows/ci.yml (example)
name: CI
on: [push, pull_request]
jobs:
  build_test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with: { node-version: '20' }
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm run lint && npm test -- --ci

Weeks 3–4: Deliver thin vertical slices

Ship features as user‑visible slices, not layers.

Slice template

1. Small spec (Given/When/Then)
2. API contract + happy‑path test
3. UI with states: empty, loading, error, success
4. Telemetry: event feature_used
5. Docs: 5 lines in CHANGELOG + a short GIF for QA

Weeks 5–6: Stabilize and prove value

• Add acceptance tests for the top flows
• Load test the slowest endpoint (target p95 < 500 ms)
• Backup + restore rehearsal
• Observability dashboard: errors, latency, signups, first‑success rate
• Release notes → pilot users

The MVP baseline checklist

• Authentication with rate limiting and secure password storage
• Authorization (least privilege)
• Input validation and request size limits
• Centralized logging + error alerts
• Daily backups + restore tested
• Feature flags for risky changes
• Basic privacy page + terms; collect minimal PII

Estimation that doesn’t lie

Estimate only the next two weeks. Use t‑shirt sizing for backlog and convert S/M/L to hours after splitting stories. Track only completed story points to set the next sprint’s capacity.

A note on architecture

Prefer simple: a single Postgres, a single API service, a single web app. Add queues or microservices only for real bottlenecks. Complexity taxes you every day.

Example backlog (first 6 weeks)

• Sign‑up/sign‑in, email verify, password reset
• Org + roles (owner, user)
• Core object CRUD + search
• Import CSV (happy path)
• Event tracking + simple dashboard
• Stripe test payments (if relevant)
• Admin toggles via feature flags
• Docs: getting started + FAQ

What to measure (and why)

• Activation: % of signups completing first core task
• Latency p95: user‑perceived speed
• Error rate: alerts per 1k requests
• Retention (week‑over‑week): are users coming back?

Releasing without fear

1. Every PR passes CI
2. Staging auto‑deploys on merge; production behind a manual approval and feature flag
3. Rollback plan = previous container tag + DB migration down steps
4. Post‑release audit: top errors, time‑to‑fix, next mitigation

Common traps (and exits)

• Endless polishing: fix a time box; ship to 5 real users
• Framework shopping: pick one you already know
• Premature scaling: more instances don’t cure poor queries—profile first
• Analytics soup: track 3 events tied to your success metric; nothing more

Resources to copy

• OWASP ASVS (baseline security)
• Twelve‑Factor App (ops sanity)
• GitHub Actions marketplace test/lint actions

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