Guide / MVP Tiers
Definitions
What each tier actually means
Scope discipline matters more than speed. A tier 1 proof that grows error handling nobody asked for has failed its deadline just as much as one that never ships.
TIER 1 · 1–2 DAYS
Proof of Technical Concept
Owner: one engineer, solo
- Isolates a single technical risk: an integration, a model's output quality, a latency ceiling, a data pipeline feasibility question
- No UI required. Logs, CLI output, notebooks, or raw responses are the deliverable
- Audience is engineering only
- Success is a clear yes or no on feasibility, plus an effort estimate for tier 2
Explicitly out of scope
Error handling, edge cases, multi tenant behaviour, security hardening, styling.
TIER 2 · 7 DAYS
Proof of Business Concept
Owner: small pair, engineering plus a stakeholder reviewer
- Must actually integrate into Printerpix, real auth, real data models, or a real workflow, not a mock of the connection
- UI is minimal but functional, clickable by a non technical reviewer
- Audience includes internal stakeholders and a Printerpix side counterpart
- Success is a business metric moving, or credibly projected to move, plus confirmation the integration is viable without a rebuild
Explicitly out of scope
Scaling, full multi tenant generalisation, complete design system compliance.
TIER 3 · 30 DAYS
MVP as a Sellable Product
Owner: full feature team plus devops
- Complete core user journey, no dead ends, no manual workarounds hidden behind the scenes
- Production quality UI, on brand, no visible seams
- Non functional requirements now count: security review, error states, expected load performance, multi tenant safety if applicable
- Success is a customer using it unsupervised and paying for it again
Explicitly out of scope
Full feature parity with a mature product. Nothing that would embarrass you in a sales call is still in scope.
A build is allowed to stop at tier 2 and never become tier 3. That is a legitimate outcome, not a failure.