One interview question I’ve gotten a few times is:
“Can you tell me about a time that you knew you couldn’t finish an assignment, goal, or project.
Random Interviewer
The first time I got that question, I think I was still in the middle of my first degree, and my thought process was something along the lines of, “Pssh- I’ve always finished everything I’ve ever set out to do,” which of course is pure cringe-worthy arrogance. A lot of the times, it seems like I never finish anything– because nothing ever feels finished. There’s always more to do.
Enter the concepts of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Stretch Goals, and Acceptance Criteria. A MVP is exactly what it sounds like– the minimum amount of features needed for the product to work for whatever predefined use case you’ve thought up. It kind of reminds me of what we used to call getting a ‘perfect score’ was for getting a passing grade on a licensing exam in my old job (72%). Barely passing meant that you studied the ‘perfect amount’ to pass without putting in unnecessary effort……..
Anyway- stretch goals are the opposite. They’re the nice-to-haves. For the over-achievers. Or, to put things another way, for those who want to go the extra mile (which might not sound so goofy once we’re talking real stakes with real money).
To that end, we’ve decided on a tentative list of MVP user stories and Stretch Goals for our Meal Planner project. Here they are in all their glory:
MVP
- Account Creation (user auth)
- Users can add and save ingredients (which persist)
- The app will return potential recipes that fit the user’s saved ingredients
Stretch Goals
- App will track likely expiration dates for saved food items
- User can favorite recipes and save them for future use
- User can filter recipes based on criteria (such as food genre)
- Recipes returned are sorted to maximize ingredients on-hand, but also
- can include recipes with missing ingredients
- User can generate a shopping list with missing ingredients from chosen recipes
- Barcode scanning
Because it’s so early in the design process- there is still plenty of work to be done for each of these user stories (just what does Barcode Scanning mean?). They’ll need to be broken apart into bite-sized chunks. Potentially weighted by both difficulty and importance. But it’s a start.
