Thread: Time To Market

Lately I got disgusted by how long I spend developing web applications, my main one is well into it's second year of development. This is obviously taking too long for a web-based project.

So, in parallel, I started another project last week with the concept in mind to get the functionality thrashed out as fast as possible to minimize the time to market i.e. have a product that can be promoted. Well, in one week, it is almost ready. So I think that by keeping in your head that version 1 of a project must be completed ASAP with just enough functionality to make it work is a good idea.

When the product is rolled out to the consumers, you can then work in the background on the extras, and things to handle scalability. Of course, you need a fully tested and well designed initial product so that you are not then wasting time fixing bugs.

The same goes for websites, have an idea, register the name, and not build the darned site.

Anyone else got the same kind of frustrations?

Yeah, I'm not a developer and while working for Will haven't really put much time in my own sites, but this sounds somewhat familiar. I think it has to do with perfectionism, and envisioning too much or too complex things for the version 1. The solution might be to simplify the idea by figuring out what its core value and selling point may be and then develop just that, as simple as possible. Make sure that the core is stable enough to work well enough when it gets public, and slap a "beta" label on it for the rest, inviting feedback through an efficient system that you can easily manage and react to.

It probably helps to learn to think in a more streamlined and focused way.

I need to take my own advice here wrt my new music site that's waiting to be made for months now, cause I wanna make it "perfect" on v1.

There really can never be a perfect v1. That's why there's always a 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, etc, etc.

Indeed. That reminds me, many open source projects start from 0.1 and build from there, so when they first release nobody really expects it to be really complete. When they achieve 1.0 it is a major milestone. I guess if we're striving for something close to a perfect v1, but want to avoid not releasing forever, that's one way of doing it.

Yeah, that's true. In fact, as much i know all the new always face the same thing including me. Even the experts get som PL if they want to start again from the beginning.

I think it is always a good idea to break large projects into smaller releases. My first large web project was a huge 1nternational B2B web site during the 1990s. Back then, shopping cart software didn't exist, so you had to build your own from scratch. The company wanted hundreds of features built into the site in the first release. Given the limited resources and lack of available expertise, that would have taken over one year and the site would have been obsolete by the time it was released. I broke the project into 90 day phases. The first phase was the USA market, the second was English-speaking markets outside of the USA, and the third introduced a range of languages. After that, we did incremental releases that added more advanced bells and whistles. The project was a huge success and was doing over $100 million in business per year when I left the project team.

Don't try to do it all at once. You will always come up with more features that you want to add and the project will never get done.

Originally Posted by Andy101

The same goes for websites, have an idea, register the name, and not build the darned site.

Like a lot of people, I also have more ideas than time. The real trick to learn is to prioritize your personal projects based up which ones are most likely to produce revenue. I have not yet mastered that concept. It is another thing that is a work in progress.

There have been similar instances with me....... i am not a web developer but always try and do some crazy web based applications with my team. but you never know if it turns out to be a success.

Originally Posted by Andy101

The same goes for websites, have an idea, register the name, and not build the darned site.

Anyone else got the same kind of frustrations?

Perhaps even worse. I spent a lot of time building a site, keep working on it after the first release and eventually abandon the whole project

Originally Posted by Loko

Perhaps even worse. I spent a lot of time building a site, keep working on it after the first release and eventually abandon the whole project

Oh I'm quite familiar with that, although this tends to happen when I figure the project wont be as big of a deal as I hope it might be, and I begin hunting for better ideas.

No need to develop new apps. You can utilize the existing, more dependable and cost free apps for the same purpose. It helps you keep check on costs.