Build or don't build a software feature? • Hacker News Board

Re: Build or don't build a software feature?

#41

Post by blowski » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 7:01 PM UTC

kevsim wrote: post #28

This is cool! It's kind of similar to what the RICE/ICE frameworks are trying to help achieve [0]. We built some scoring of impact/effort into our tool Kitemaker [1] and allow teams to prioritize their work by these things. We ended up going with really simple scores like S/M/L since it's super hard to know the difference between a 6 and a 7 (and it probably doesn't really matter anyway). 0: https://medium.com/glidr/…

You didn’t ask for this feedback but I’ll give it to you - your homepage is way too generic. “Break silos”, “Focus on what matters”, “Powerful integrations”, etc. There are 1000s of tools offering those features - why is Kitemaker different and worth me looking at?

Re: Build or don't build a software feature?

#42

Post by faeyanpiraat » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 7:03 PM UTC

I wouldn’t show the result in realtime, as it allows fine tuning parameters to get to a result I want, and not one I need.

Re: Build or don't build a software feature?

#43

Post by orblivion » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

axg11 wrote: post #15

Interesting visual tool and mental framework. Unfortunately, I think this would have "failed" in all the decision processes I have been a part of. Why? Each of the questions is valid, but bad decisions usually stem from incorrectly answering one of these questions. > How valuable is the feature to the target users, truly? Take this question for example. Accurately answering it is not always possible. A common mistake…

> your users don't have the perspective that you have in terms of (a) what is possible, and (b) the knock-on effects of the feature on other aspects of the software value proposition

"Hey Jack, we've been asking for an edit button for years! It's not that difficult."

Re: Build or don't build a software feature?

#44

Post by p0nce » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 8:02 PM UTC

Features are a last resort proposition.

Re: Build or don't build a software feature?

#45

Post by chrismorgan » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 10:58 AM UTC

orliesaurus wrote: post #26

chrismorgan wrote: post #12

> This page requires Javascript to function. Missed an opportunity to present the “don’t build” reasoning! :-)

I have yet to meet someone in real life who disabled js on the browser

It is, unfortunately, only really an option that’s particularly feasible for technically-inclined people. Which is a shame, because it speeds up the web so much, and makes a great many pages work much better—but it breaks a fair bit too. (Those are the main reasons I started doing it a few years ago, rather than privacy and such, which are secondary reasons at most to me.)

The sad story: it’s the technically-inclined people that have powerful machines despite being capable of making do with weak machines, knowing better how to manage limited computational resources, but it’s the technically-ignorant people that have weak machines and need more powerful machines.

In other news, after thinking of it from time to time for a few years, yesterday I finally disabled all font selection to see what it’s like, so now pages can only choose monospace, sans-serif or serif (I choose my own fonts for those years ago—all this font stuff is in Firefox’s preferences, BTW, no extension required). It’s rather pleasant, so far, a great improvement, with only very minor trouble from icon fonts.