​When you’ve validated your product idea and are ready to build your MVP, how many developers is optimal?

While it may seem that the answer is “the most I can afford”, I would argue that just one senior developer is optimal.

It may seem that this is creating an intentional bottleneck. In a sense it is, but there are good reasons for this. And it’s important to understand that I’m talking about this within the context of creating an MVP.

1. During MVP development, it’s common for requirements to be uncovered which will require quite major shifts in direction. The less developers you have, the less chance there is of large amounts of work being done in the wrong direction.
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   Similarly, the less complex your team is, the easier it is to shift directions quickly.
2. At this stage of product development you should be building as little as possible. The code that you do build should be as high quality as possible, while considering the trade-offs needed to account for the fact that the MVP is going to change.
3. It forces you to be ruthless with your requirements, because if you’re not, it will clearly impact on the timeline.

In short, having one developer reduces the chance of technical debt being created. Technical debt in this context means code and database decisions which make future changes more difficult.

One good developer will do things in a consistent way, and each section of the application will take into account the design decisions made in other sections.

It may seem counterintuitive to focus on quality at this point, but high quality code is easier to change. And change is almost definite at this stage.

The above obviously depends on finding the right person, and who is that?

A senior developer. This means someone with more than 10 years of commercial experience across multiple employers. And preferably someone that has run software in production.

Don’t trust resumes. Give them a one week real task first and see how they perform.