

The Only Truly Failed Project - fogus
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001297.html

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ErrantX
_How many people know that the lead developer for Bob 2.0 was also the co-
founder of Valve and the development lead for Half-Life_ [Gabe Newell]

Worthwhile read just for that snippet of knowledge!

~~~
henning
Half-Life was almost completely redesigned from scratch because they realized
well into the project that the game they were making was not fun. You can read
about it at <http://www.gamasutra.com/features/19991210/birdwell_01.htm> ,
I've posted it here before.

The rest is history.

~~~
DannoHung
Valve practices like... anti-agile. They take something and they say, "No,
it's not PERFECT, let's start over."

And they're heroes.

~~~
unalone
Pixar's the same way. They halted production of Toy Story for the better part
of a year (if I recall the time correctly) so that the writers could improve
the story.

Valve is terrific. I'll love them forever not for Half-Life, which is great
but flawed, but for Steam, which lets me buy games quickly and has incredible
weekend deals. (Two weeks ago they sold 10 brilliant indie games for $30. Best
game-related deal since the Orange Box, which incidentally was also Valve.)

~~~
wlievens
Eight games, IIRC. I bought that pack too since I hadn't played Goo and Braid
yet past the demo.

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yesimahuman
I remember MS Bob being enjoyable when I was a kid. I loved the characters,
the rooms, and the feeling it gave me. I'm installing it in a virtual machine
right now so I can relive it. I'm sure I'm going to be disappointed, things
just aren't as magical when you grow up.

~~~
yesimahuman
Okay, I just decided I was a dumb ass kid. MS Bob is lame!

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swilliams
Microsoft Bob is quickly becoming a pseudo Godwin's law for tech bloggers.
There hasn't been anything new written about it in years. The only sort of
interesting points were written in the article codinghorror quotes.
([http://www.techflash.com/microsoft/Innovation_The_lessons_of...](http://www.techflash.com/microsoft/Innovation_The_lessons_of_Bob_53605837.html))

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billswift
The final line is great: "The only truly failed project is the one where you
didn't learn anything along the way."

If the project is original or interesting, you almost have to go out of your
way not to learn anything.

~~~
Batsu
I do love that last line. Overall, a good post from what I find is an often
stale blogger.

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edw519
_I believe it's impossible to succeed without failing._

Not anymore.

OP overlooks the key to avoiding failure: release early and often. Customer
feedback _during_ development, not afterwards, is the rudder that keeps your
project from going down the abyss. Unless you're an ocean liner. Like
Microsoft.

~~~
access_denied
Some projects don't have that possibility.

~~~
edw519
Examples?

(I've run many projects and have always been able to get _some_ consumer
feedback during development.)

~~~
gloob
"Release early, release often," would, for instance, likely be a poor
philosophy for a team working on the computer vision systems used by armed
autonomous military vehicles.

~~~
DannoHung
Could test early and test often be substituted successfully?

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scorpion032
"Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want."

