

Does your website add features or solve problems? - briancray
http://briancray.com/2010/03/30/website-minimum-viable-product/

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mcantor
I liked that this included the question "What is the minimum viable product?".
It reminds me of a game design article I read a long time ago, which mentioned
that the best way to figure out if you have a game that will be fun when it's
finished is to "start with the stupidest thing that could possibly work." In
other words, starting small and focusing on the core mechanic, and building on
that only once you've "found the fun," is a reliable way to produce fun games.
This is in stark contrast to the way many projects are run (game or
otherwise), in which thousands of features are planned out right from the
start and presumably developed in parallel, like a hundred people
simultaneously trying to stuff themselves through a single doorway.

~~~
jamesbritt
" like a hundred people simultaneously trying to stuff themselves through a
single doorway."

Great analogy.

It also made me think of a clown car, with an endless series of zany features
emerging.

~~~
mcantor
"SEO optimization!"

"Workflow improvements!"

"Order pipeline streamlining!"

"Customer surveillance!"

"Potato launcher!"

"Fondue pot!"

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megamark16
I tried to get this ideology through to my boss at my last job, I said "Which
features are the most important and must be done before we can release?" His
reply was "All of them, somebody out there needs each of those features!" It
was very frustrating not being able to make him see the benefit of less.

~~~
jamesbritt
Perhaps a better question is, "Which features are going to pay for themselves,
both for the the initial development and the long-term maintenance?"

When working on JotBot at Happy Camper we had numerous discussion about
features. In retrospect there are things that were added that may have been
worth the initial effort but because of bugs or quirks are now more of a
drain.

There was little argument that there were people who could use the features,
but the potential revenue gain did not match the cost of adding + the cost of
maintaining.

There's also the opportunity cost of delaying release while adding things. If
you want a manager to drop features you need to spell out the financial cost.

(Also, if someone tells you that someone needs feature X, ask them how exactly
do they know that? And ask how they determined that the desires of one person
(or N people) justify the cost.)

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mdg
Brian, I like the link you have at the end of the article: "Back to Hacker
News". I assume it does the same when referred from Reddit?

[ retracted comment ]

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briancray
Thanks, and yes--it should do the same for reddit. To take this off of HN,
could you e-mail me your browser so I can look into the --> problem

