Deep Blue Sky is approached probably once a week by a new start-up looking to make it in the world.
This has been happening most of my professional career so I thought it would help a few folk to share my philosophy ( and my reasoning ) on how to tackle a big project with lots of unknowns.
Principally I believe in starting small, on a solid foundation, and building up from there.
I believe this so much that I've spent years building a whole PHP Framework to allow really rapid prototyping which has become the cornerstone of Deep Blue Sky's business. I also believe in mitigating risk as much as is possible and guessing as little as possible.
So if you have a great idea for a new website here are few things to keep in mind:
- A minimum viable product will be viable
Your customers will engage with your minimum viable product. They won't see what's missing and they won't mind that it's not there. Nothing else should be necessary at stage one and no more resources should be spent adding functionality that isn't strictly necessary.
- Priority is paramount
The client's resources are finite so prioritising how they are used is of paramount importance.
- Small steps; engage the users & reduce risk
By focusing on a quick, simple and engaging first phase we mitigate any risk associated with the development of more complex features. When the time comes to move to phase two a canvas of the current users will allow us to establish which new features are really likely to reap rewards. We're not guessing too far into the future and we are training up a strong evangelical user-base who feel involved and valued along the way.
- Build a solid foundation
Firstly this relates to software. Creating a clean solid foundation will simplify the process of growing in the future. Knowing roughly where you would like to be building in three years will allow the developer to ensure the foundations extend in that direction at probably no more cost than ignoring the future and yet will be a massive help in three years time.
Secondly this relates to your users. By launching a good, clean, simple product to begin with you create a solid foundation of core users who understand and believe in your product. As you grow they come to believe in your process too.
- Concepts that pivot are more likely to succeed.
Statistically start-ups which pivot often (that is; check how they're doing and how they're being used and change direction if necessary) are far more likely to succeed. This has been bourn out recently by the Start-Up Genome Project
- Release early, release often
All of the above comes to this. A quick release of minimal features gets a solid foundation built and live in the shortest possible time and provides a clean, simple and clear product foundation on which to build.
By engaging with the users who engage with the site we will be able to learn what functionality is likely to produce a benefit and pivot our wish-list of future features to redefine Phase II, III and so on according not only to cost, timescale and client priority but also to user priority and a good estimate of the efficacy of each feature.
So these are my principals for focusing the minds of new clients who come to us with big ideas and no clear direction.
For anyone who wonders if I only impose these principles on our clients I could also say I believe in this process so much that I've been building twiDAQ on the same basis. twiDAQ is a very basic, minimum viable product with a great user-base, a massive amount of foundation work done and it is currently pivoting towards a very clear beta release this summer with a much clearer objective than I would have been able to define if I'd tried to do everything at once.
So as someone now sitting on the client side of the fence I can promise that this little list is a valuable guide to focus the mind.
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