Software

The term “Minimal Viable Product” - or more often just MVP - has become more and more used over the past decade. When explaining the concept I’ve often seen illustrations like this one:

I do, however, think these are bad illustrations, as they bring the wrong message.

• The “Not like this” is fine to show that it’s not about building step by step - and not havig a usable product until the end.
• The “Like this” is, however, not providing the right illustration. It shows you can buy/make the wrong product 5 times until you get it right.

When I am applying MVP - I want to start with the Minimum Viable Product. I want to start with a usable (a viable product) and add features and capabilities to this - not rebuild it from scratch in every iteration. This is why after playing with an AI generator a bit I’ve come up with a better illustration I use to explain MVP which I thing is far better.

Sometimes you need to move files between devices, and it’s often been quite a hassle to just being able to get a file from a Windows machine to an iPad or from Linux to a Mac laptop.

My most common case has often been to move files between MacOS and Android - and while Wifi File Explorer Pro has worked, it’s always seemed a little clumsy. It basically create a webserver on the Android device with a simple but quite usable interface.

It seems to be quite popular to move away from custom build IT solutions to so called COTS - commercial of the shelf solutions. The idea being, that to software solution fulfil a functionality which long has been commoditized and standardized to such an extent that it offers no “competitive edge” nor core value to the business.

For most companies and organizations the office suite would be a pretty safe bet for a piece of software which is magnificently suited for a COTS solution. Finding someone who develops an internal word processor in-house seems crazy as so many fully capable solutions exists in the market.