From Scarcity to Abundance
For more than two decades, the concept of the Minimum Viable Product shaped how digital products were designed, prioritised, and implemented. The underlying logic was highly rational. In a world where software development was expensive, slow, and organisationally fragmented, reducing scope was essential. Products had to be stripped down to their absolute core functionality in order to validate ideas without consuming excessive time and resources.
This principle became deeply embedded into startup culture, innovation frameworks, and increasingly also into large enterprises attempting to become more agile. Build small. Launch early. Learn fast. Iterate continuously.
But this logic was built for a different technological reality.
Today, AI-assisted coding, agentic workflows, and massively accelerated implementation cycles are beginning to alter the economics of software development fundamentally. What previously required specifications, alignment workshops, project structures, implementation teams, and long development cycles can increasingly emerge directly from structured domain logic combined with AI-supported execution.
This shift is not incremental. It is structural.
One of the most remarkable aspects is that the traditional distinction between prototype and operational system is beginning to dissolve. In many cases, what starts as an experiment already evolves within days into something highly functional, visually polished, operationally usable, and surprisingly comprehensive.
The historical danger of underbuilding is increasingly being replaced by the opposite problem: overbuilding.
For the first time in software history, organisations may need to actively resist the temptation to add too much functionality too early.
Historically, adding functionality carried friction. Every additional feature implied implementation effort, budget discussions, prioritisation conflicts, testing requirements, and deployment complexity. Functionality therefore had a natural economic filter.
AI-assisted development dramatically weakens this filter.
Additional workflows, dashboards, integrations, analytics layers, simulations, visualisations, or automation components can now often be implemented at extraordinary speed. What previously represented weeks or months of work may increasingly become a matter of hours.
As a result, many modern systems no longer resemble Minimum Viable Products.
They increasingly resemble Maximum Viable Products.
Not because organisations intentionally seek complexity, but because the baseline speed of creation has shifted so dramatically that scope expansion becomes almost automatic.
The Bottleneck Is No Longer Coding
This changes the bottleneck of software development itself.
For decades, implementation capacity represented the central limiting factor. The key question was whether something could realistically be built within available time and resources.
That question is becoming less dominant.
The new bottleneck is increasingly elsewhere.
It moves towards judgment, focus, prioritisation, and the quality of the underlying domain logic.
Because when implementation friction collapses, almost everything becomes technically possible. The strategic challenge therefore shifts from creation towards selection.
- Which functionality actually creates value?
- Which workflows improve clarity?
- Which additional layer creates complexity without improving outcomes?
- At which point does "more" reduce usability instead of enhancing it?
This transition may become particularly relevant in industries characterised by operational complexity and regulatory constraints, such as wealth management, banking, insurance, or financial infrastructure.
In these industries, the real value rarely lies in code itself.
The real value lies in the operational logic behind the system:
- The embedded expertise
- The governance structures
- The investment methodology
- The decision rules
- The process architecture
- The constraints and guardrails
This is precisely where AI-assisted coding becomes especially interesting.
Because the core differentiator increasingly shifts away from pure implementation capability and towards the ability to translate structured expertise into executable systems.
When Domain Logic Becomes the Product
In this emerging environment, prompts are no longer merely instructions for generating text or code. They increasingly become executable specifications that operationalise domain knowledge directly into functioning applications.
The implications are substantial.
For years, organisations struggled with the translation layer between business and technology. Domain experts described requirements. Analysts translated them into specifications. Development teams interpreted and implemented them.
Large parts of digital transformation projects were essentially coordination exercises between these layers. And yes, I have effectively been working at this intersection my entire professional life.
AI-assisted development compresses this chain dramatically.
A structured domain expert with strong conceptual thinking can now increasingly operationalise ideas directly into working systems without requiring traditional development structures to the same extent as before.
This does not eliminate engineering discipline, governance, architecture, or quality assurance. In many cases, these become even more important. But the balance of power inside product development shifts considerably.
Coding is increasingly becoming less of a bottleneck. Clarity, focus, and structured domain expertise are becoming more important instead.
If this trend continues, differentiation will increasingly emerge from superior ideas, clarity of thought, quality of operational design, embedded expertise, structured processes, distribution, and strategic focus.
Ironically, in the age of AI, the ability to deliberately decide what not to build may become one of the most valuable strategic capabilities.
Because when nearly everything becomes buildable, the ability to decide what should not be built becomes strategically critical.
The MVP era was shaped by scarcity.
The next era may be shaped by abundance.
And abundance changes the nature of product development fundamentally.