A board member asked for the estimated cost of the minimum viable product (MVP) to obtain formal project approval. How should you report that cost?

The correct answer is to estimate user story points and forecast a budget for that deliverable. In agile environments, an MVP is defined by its features, often expressed as user stories. Estimating the story points for these user stories provides a basis for forecasting the budget required to deliver that specific set of features. This approach directly aligns with agile principles of iterative development and value delivery. Calculating the Budget at Completion (BAC) based on completed and planned features is incorrect because BAC is a measure of the total planned budget for the entire project, not specifically for an MVP, and it typically applies to projects where a full scope is defined upfront. Determining control accounts and using a top-down estimate is a valid budgeting technique, but it's more suited for larger, more traditional projects or for initial high-level estimates, not for the granular, feature-driven estimation of an MVP in an agile context. Considering the Cost Performance Index (CPI) using earned value (EV) divided by costs is a method for evaluating project performance against the budget, not for initially estimating the cost of an MVP. CPI is a retrospective metric, not a prospective estimation technique.