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Iterative development: the secret to great product launches

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Re: Iterative development: the secret to great product launches

#71

Post by tveita »

chooseaname wrote: post #43
lbacaj wrote: post #27

I have built many things in my short career, have worked at big and small companies. In my view iterative development is far harder, maybe even impossible, to do at companies that don’t have the culture for it. Startups have it and most grow up with it but you’ll struggle to succeed with this approach at any big company. They may introduce Agile and bring in Agile coaches but they are just putting lipstick on the pig…

From what I have seen, the first version is more iterative. When the inevitable re-write happens, architecture astronauting happens. Devs get this mindset that they can build a Neo[0] system that can handle any future feature request and so the product stalls. And stalls. And ... well you get the picture. [0] "The One..."

This is commonly known as the second-system effect, named by Fred Brooks.

Re: Iterative development: the secret to great product launches

#72

Post by davidjnelson »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #45
nadam wrote: post #30

Agile, MVP, Iterative development: these are common knowledge by now. But I think there are problem spaces where this does not really work becasue even an MVP must be huge, otherwise users will simply ignore the product. You cannot write a small MVP of a browser, an operating system, a search engine, a game engine, a 3D modeling suite, etc... I think markets in problem spaces where you can start with a very small MVP…

> You cannot write a small MVP of a browser, an operating system, a search engine, a game engine, a 3D modeling suite, etc I don't think that's true at all. You absolutely can and should build an MVP of all these things. You certainly could release an MVP search engine (or even a browser-based game). You probably can't hope to gain traction at large with an MVP browser or operating system, but you can start using the…

I agree. If you look at the book The Lean Startup, it’s pretty hilarious how hacks like skipping player movement animations led to a “teleport” effect for the imvu product that users loved. That’s a great example of mvp working - they didn’t know what the customer wanted, and the customer actually preferred the hacky shortcut.

Re: Iterative development: the secret to great product launches

#73

Post by igouy »

Jtsummers wrote: post #56
shadowtree wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A complex system designed from scratch never works". And yet we flew to the moon. And have airplanes, and and and. A lot of agile is just an excuse for software "engineering" being in the throw shit at the wall and see what sticks stage of evolution. Construction went through the same, software has freemasons now. But no engineering whatsoever. Example: People still write their own date conversions (and fuck it up).

Those weren't designed "from scratch", start-to-finish, with no testing or prototyping along the way. The Wright Brothers developed a wind tunnel and many models on their way to first flight. Same concept for getting to the moon. Those large scale projects were not done in a Waterfall fashion, they were done iteratively with models/simulations/prototypes produced along the way.

> done iteratively with models/simulations/prototypes

models/simulations/prototypes != iteratively

Re: Iterative development: the secret to great product launches

#74

Post by Jtsummers »

igouy wrote: post #73
Jtsummers wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those weren't designed "from scratch", start-to-finish, with no testing or prototyping along the way. The Wright Brothers developed a wind tunnel and many models on their way to first flight. Same concept for getting to the moon. Those large scale projects were not done in a Waterfall fashion, they were done iteratively with models/simulations/prototypes produced along the way.

> done iteratively with models/simulations/prototypes models/simulations/prototypes != iteratively

They’re key components of the iterative process.

Re: Iterative development: the secret to great product launches

#75

Post by lmm »

igouy wrote: post #50
lmm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And yet we flew to the moon. And have airplanes, and and and. We do, but not by designing from scratch. We achieved those things by incrementally extending existing designs and verifying that the newer, more complex designs had the desired properties . > A lot of agile is just an excuse for software "engineering" being in the throw shit at the wall and see what sticks stage of evolution. Construction went through t…

> What if "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" really is a better way of making software than "engineering"? What if it isn't.

If it isn't, then maybe agile is a bad idea and we should expect to see agile projects fail more often/expensively than non-agile projects. But that's not what we see (at least not what I've seen).

Re: Iterative development: the secret to great product launches

#76

Post by igouy »

Jtsummers wrote: post #74
igouy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> done iteratively with models/simulations/prototypes models/simulations/prototypes != iteratively

They’re key components of the iterative process.

They're key components of BDUF —

"Figure 7. Step 3: Attempt to do the job twice - the first result provides an early simulation of the final product."

http://www-scf.usc.edu/~csci201/lectures/Lecture11/royce1970...

Re: Iterative development: the secret to great product launches

#77

Post by omouse »

Biggest missing piece here is what drives the plan and the development. Delivering value? How is the value defined and where's that coming from? Customer surveys every few months? Number of clicks on a feature or page?

Can't have a great product launch without understanding the customer and that includes acquiring them through sales & marketing. Iterative development is almost a given at this point.

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