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Totally agree. In my opinion, with this type of MVP strategy, work done should always be in the service of something else. Initially, an MVP is created to test out ideas and also to learn what structurally it takes to build your product.

After the MVP, you may wish to add more features or support more users, it is at that point that you can assess what is debt and what is not. It's not a matter of "cruftiness" but a matter of what's holding you back from adding additional features or supporting a larger number of users.

If we frame all work as doing something that will deliver some sort of value (be it customer value or unlock the potential to add more features to add customer value), then it becomes a more constructive conversation about work that needs to be done, debt or otherwise.

I'm not a fan of just looking at whether code is crufty or not to determine if it's "technical debt". If you look at code long enough, you'll find something you don't like and want to rewrite, but it has to be in the service of some other goal or else you'll just become an architecture astronaut building wonderful things that don't provide value.




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