MVP does not mean cheap and ugly
It means narrow and real. Hosted, usable, with the permissions and audit trail that workflow needs — and nothing else. A slide deck is not an MVP. A private demo with dummy data is not an MVP. Someone in the business completing the job on Tuesday morning, without you in the room, is.
How to choose the slice
Write the expensive assumption as a sentence. “Warehouse staff will record dispatches in the system instead of WhatsApp.” Then build only what that sentence requires. Reports can wait. The customer portal can wait. The second warehouse can wait.
If you cannot name the assumption, you are not ready to build an MVP. You are ready for a workshop.
What we refuse to strip out
Login, roles, backups, a way to undo a bad action, and a handover. Cutting those to hit a date produces something you cannot put in front of staff. That is a prototype. Call it that and budget the next step; do not call it an MVP and then wonder why nobody uses it.
Cost and sequencing sit in how much custom software costs. If the alternative is buying a product and bending it, read the build versus buy comparison first.