Stop being creative – Start shipping
Seth Godin – bestselling author and entrepreneur – gives an inspirational speech about human behaviour and why we don’t get our projects done on time and in budget. He outlines a common creative affliction: sabotaging our projects just before we show them to the world. Godin targets our “lizard brain” as the source of these primal doubts, and implores us to “thrash at the beginning” of projects so that we can ship on time and on budget.
How do we get to ship on time and on budget? Ship when you run out of time or budget. The focus should be shipping. By doing that the rest is easy. By focusing on shipping the priorities will be set right. Thus, thrash early because then thrashing is cheap.
I believe in a similar process (and this doesn’t only account for software development): Start with the essentials, no fancy stuff. Add the fancy stuff later if necessary (best to keep it simple). Timebox your time for thinking. Start doing as fast as possible. By doing you will encounter problems you never thought about.
I recommend you watch this presentation. It’s worth it.
Seth Godin is a bestselling author, entrepreneur, and agent of change. His recent books, which have graced the New York Times, Business Week, and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists, include Tribes, Purple Cow, The Dip, and All Marketers Are Liars. Seth was founder and CEO of Yoyodyne, the industry’s leading interactive direct marketing company, which Yahoo! acquired in late 1998. He holds an MBA from Stanford, and was called “the Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age” by Business Week.
29. January 2010 @ 18:06
The top -> down approach is very common, so starting with the essentials is the best idea in most cases. Unfortunately it’s sometimes hard to find out what the essentials really are and if they are stable enough to stay valid until shipping. If this is easy to handle or not highly depends on the team or partner you are working with. It always gets tougher than you thought.
29. January 2010 @ 21:03
Yes, I absolutely agree. It is not always easy to find what is essential. However, that is the part you need to figure out fast. Therefore, I suggest: Build something small, throw it out there, check how the people use it. Then adapt/enhance. This is even more important as it is terribly hard to take away features (unless really nobody uses them). In the beginning many products are really beautiful until they reach a certain point were feature creep sets in. Feature creep is very toxic. That’s when I suggest to make a strict rule: When somebody wants to develop a new feature, he has to take another one out (unless it is a “new” product or fulfills a completely new purpose).The hard part is not adding all kind of new features. The hard part is saying no.
30. January 2010 @ 11:48