FIXME: Get your MVP ready faster with one simple trick

When building a MVP you are looking to get something out of the door fast. There will be bugs. Your main goal is to see how your customers react to your new product. Are they using it? Are they seeing a value in it?

The one thing that scares developers most of all is getting their code reviewed, criticized and butched by one of their peers.

It is a good thing when your developers are trying to build something with clean code that can scale to a million users, but when building a MVP (Minimum Viable Product) your focus should really be on production speed – not on code quality.

So, I suggest you introduce one rule - use the FIXME comment:

Tell the developers that if they can save a significant amount of time – do the simplest solution and write a FIXME: comment explaining that this code was part of an MVP and that you had no time building the solution you really wanted.

This little comment will tell future developers that the poor guy writing this had a horrible boss (that’s you) and in order to complete this project in time he/she had to resort to using an ugly/less-than-optimal solution.

This comment does magic.

It tells code reviewers that this programmer knows better. They will not ridicule him/her for writing the ‘bad’ code, and your developer will get peace of mind - knowing that he/she clearly marked the quickfix solution.

Next iteration - after you get feedback from customers – you can have your developers fix the worst FIXME comments. Most of they time they can be deleted or worked around in other ways since customer feedback called for a complete rewrite of certain parts of your app anyway. Good thing you did not spend time optimizing that thing that you just threw away.

So, just get it shipped!

If your code is filled with FIXME comments you have a problem. Everything can not be quick fixes and ugly hacks. But whenever it saves a significant amount of time it will certainly be worth it when building an MVP.

If you are working with The Perfectionist this will be problematic at first, but assure them they will get time to fix it later and plan out time for it and they will agree to do some quick fixes too.