Two very different ways to size early work

When you’re scoping the next chunk of work on a product, you can have one of two underlying goals.

Completeness: shipping a finished, polished thing that does what it’s supposed to do, with no glaring holes.

Learning: shipping the smallest version that produces real understanding about what to do next.

These produce very different products. Completeness-scoped work tends to be bigger, slower, and aimed at the user’s eventual experience. Learning-scoped work tends to be smaller, faster, and aimed at answering specific questions. Both can be valuable, but mixing them up — applying one mindset when the situation calls for the other — is one of the most common scoping mistakes.

Most early-stage work should be scoped for learning, not completeness. The...

How to scope for learning, not completeness