The four phases to Minimum Viable Platform (MVP)

The article discusses the four phases of the Minimum Viable Platform (MVP) framework developed by Humanitec after working with numerous enterprise organizations. These phases include Discovery, Integration, Deployment, and Prep for Adoption. The MVP is a subset of the reference architecture that focuses on key components to ensure it represents real requirements and can clearly show value to users and stakeholders. It should not be compliant with all security and policy requirements or involve advanced architectures or configurations. The Discovery phase involves aligning platform initiatives with broader business objectives, defining scope and boundaries, and identifying pain points for developers and ops teams. The Integration phase sets up the organization within Humanitec, connects cloud providers and Kubernetes clusters, and creates resources defined in phase one. In the Deployment phase, resource definitions and matching are set up, values and secrets are defined, CI/CD pipeline is established, and developer interfaces are set up. The Prep for Adoption phase measures the impact of the MVP on workflows and calculates ROI for a final leadership-level presentation. The article emphasizes that the MVP program helps organizations move quickly and avoid losing momentum on their platform engineering initiatives while ensuring they have a clear framework to prove value to stakeholders.