A common objection to building an MVP, or Minimum Viable Product, is that it could end up being a rushed, shoddy product with a messy code base. But people forget this is not a proof of concept we're building here. This is a functioning, early version of your product that will end up in the hands of customers.

You can’t validate your hypothesis if your MVP doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. So that already implies whatever features your app or website required at the time, have to work properly.

But whether the code you're writing is nice and tidy, is a different thing altogether. It depends on who you're asking, but in general, engineers will mention stuff like:

👉 Code has to be well-organized and readable.

👉 Code has to be fully tested and optimized.

👉 Code needs to have full error handling.

That's partially correct, in my opinion. Keep in mind what an MVP is really for. Are you going to pay an engineer to spend hours optimizing and refactoring code for a product you're not even entirely sure people will love?

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