Week Two
Week two has felt like an eternity, and surely the amount of productivity is close to that. I've never expected to have put together something so quickly and with such high quality before in my life! The requirements for the upmost quality of code and timeliness is as extreme as you could imagine, since the one I have to answer to here is simply: me. You are your harshest critic.
Week two went really smoothly, as I started hitting my stride in feature development balanced with all the other planning, management, and what nots of the product. There has been awesome feedback so far from our advisors, and just bouncing the idea off people is easier and easier, meaning the problem we're solving, and the solution, are understandable and clear. It's not completely perfected yet, but everything's pointing in the right direction. The minimum viable product is stripped down pretty far, and definitely scary to release since it's not exactly what our grand vision is (far from it really). The human tendency to try to completely bedazzle the audience with the first splash upfront is difficult to ignore. We must see the value in quick and lightweight releases of the product, as long as each release provides a solid, unique, and easy to understand message each time.
People don't need your product right away, if they do then it has to be perfect right away. Without even having people try it, there's no way to know what they want. Instead the approach the company is taking is to give people something that's different, that begins to solve the fundamentals of the problems they have. Once they commit to that one single idea we've released, they're hooked! Now they NEED new features. And that's what we build =)
Aside from code, I decided to get out and take some pictures again this weekend. This time I was pleasantly accompanied by my #1, and we did some exploring around Moss Beach / Fitzgerald Marine Reserve.
See all pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kinetic/
Teasers below:
