If you ever developed software, then you must have answered the question - what is your MVP? A clear MVP is crucial to keep us on track, focused on the core value of our product, and to prioritize decisions that matter most. Think of it as not choosing the living room decor, before the foundation of the house is in place.
MVP can also be a trap.
The bigger the part that software plays in our daily lives, and the more we rely on our software, the more complex and extensive it becomes. As a result, every new product’s MVP grows larger, making it harder and more time-consuming to build. It’s as if you had to rebuild the entire house from the ground up, just to recarpet a bedroom.
MVP is simple; it is an excellent approach to a small, narrow scoped problem. MVP is an excellent tactical prototyping approach, but a bad strategy. It encourages tunnel vision, and leads to reinventing the wheel. Aiming for MVPs we end up creating multiple silos. MVP is an ally of a good product in a vacuum, but an enemy of a good solution. Because our lives are complex, and so are the problems that need solving.
There is a saying that “90% of the work gets done in 10% of the time, and the last 10% of the work takes 90% of the time”. Usually a large portion of the MVP falls within the initial 90%, and more often than not, it was already pretty sound. Unfortunately, developers find themselves rebuilding the foundations over and over again, instead of focusing on the remaining 10%, where the real impact is.
The key to comprehensive solutions is building them upon the existing ones. Yet the current unit of granularity in software - the “application” - isn’t suitable for reusing and extending. Each application is like a perfectly solid smooth brick, but one that cannot be bound together with other bricks to build a wall of a house. To connect any two of the bricks we need to build a custom integration.
XenonJs proposes a novel approach: its modular architecture enables effectively leveraging an entire ecosystem and seamlessly interoperating with 3rd-party components. Rather than rebuilding the end-to-end from scratch, XenonJs allows you to specifically focus on your own innovative features implementation.
To find out more on how XenonJs promotes reuse and composability, please visit our website, repository or get in touch.