ArgeL’s Blog

            Chapter two suggests that to underdo competition. It means that you can beat your competitors by simply making less features, less options or preferences, less people and corporate structure, less meetings and abstractions, less promises, and so on and so forth. “This sort of one-upping Cold War mentality is a dead-end. It’s an expensive, defensive, and paranoid way of building products. Defensive, paranoid companies can’t think ahead, they can only think behind. They don’t lead, they follow.”

Here are the benefits of fixing time and budget, and keeping scope flexible:

·Prioritization

You have to figure out what’s really important. What’s going to make it into this initial release? This forces a constraint on you which will push you to make tough decisions instead of hemming and hawing.

·Reality

Setting expectations is key. If you try to fix time, budget, and scope, you won’t be able to deliver at a high level of quality. Sure, you can probably deliver something, but is “something” what you really want to deliver?

·Flexibility

The ability to change is key. Having everything fixed makes it tough to change. Injecting scope flexibility will introduce options based on your real experience building the product. Flexibility is your friend.

Our recommendation: Scope down. It’s better to make half a product than a half-assed product.

 Passion

Your passion — or lack of — will shine through

The less your app is a chore to build, the better it will be. Keep it small and managable so you can actually enjoy the process.

If your app doesn’t excite you, something’s wrong. If you’re only working on it in order to cash out, it will show. Likewise, if you feel passionately about your app, it will come through in the final product. People can read between the lines.