If You Give a Manager an MVP

A cautionary bedtime story of when "minimal" means everything and "viable" means now.

It all began with one modest MVP—before the roadmap rewrites, the legal reviews, and the sprint-zero standups. This is the bedtime story I wrote for product managers everywhere, loosely inspired by Laura Numeroff’s ‘If You Give a Moose a Muffin’—because that story isn’t just about snacks, it’s about scope:

• give a manager a taste of possibility, and they’ll want the whole buffet.

Only in this version, the moose wears a blazer, the muffin is your prototype, and the product manager? They just wanted to validate a simple idea before everything spiraled.

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If you build a simple MVP,
just to validate a hunch—
management will spot it quickly,
and demand a full-scale launch.

When you say, “It’s just for testing,”
with data points in mind,
they will call it “nearly finished,”
leaving validation behind.

And when you show the prototype,
they will forward it to Sales.
“This looks ready for our clients!”
as your roadmap quickly flails.

Then, engineering will raise concerns,
about scaling and technical debt.
“We should refactor the backend first,”
though no users have seen it yet.

“Where is the infrastructure?”
they will ask with furrowed brow.
“We need sprints of platform building,”
for a product unproven now.

Sales will jump into the fray then,
with a wishlist 10 miles long.
“Our clients need these features,”
though your research proves them wrong.

Then Legal will demand reviews,
for compliance not yet due.
They will block your simple testing,
with requirements difficult and new.

Marketing will need a name,
and a tagline they can share.
Then they will post a launch date,
while your team pulls out their hair.

And chances are quite certain,
as your MVP grows and grows,
you’ll be building version 2.5,
before version 1 even shows.

And if you try another MVP…
the cycle starts anew.
You’ll build a simple prototype,
and they’ll demand a full-scale debut.

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This story is the second in my Broken Bedtime Stories for Product Managers series, a loving parody of Laura Numeroff and Felicia Bond’s wonderfully chaotic trilogy. In this version, “minimum” became mythical and “viable” became a mandate. But don’t worry—the bedtime saga doesn’t end here. Enjoy post numero uno in this series, ‘If You Give Sales a Screenshot.’

Still to come Update: If You Pitch a Programmer a Problem, along with a few bonus fables from the fabled land of Jira, Gantt, and gently weeping roadmaps. Cozy slippers encouraged. Scope creep inevitable.

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