Cutting Teeth, Software Projects, The First Two Weeks

A few questions came up recently that I wanted to answer, but before I answered I wanted to post them to see what others might think.

What are the most basic concepts of the application story needed to get started? What should be assumed to be complete based on that after 1 week? After 2 weeks are up, what could or should be delivered for a MVP (Minimally Viable Product)? Ideally speaking development wouldn’t start until one has done a few paper prototyping sessions and written up a number of user stories. Often though just a minimal amount of things actually need to be known. My immediate answer to, “what is the most basic concepts of the application story needed to get started?” would be,

A simple story around the core prospective user of the application.

An example would be a story along these lines. Since I’m the user in this case, I’ll use “I” instead of “the user”.