The Meat and Potatoes
Defining the Initial Release
I’ve been diligently working on the IA for my side project and come to the point where I have to make the tough decision as to what will constitute the first release. I could go in one direction that would convey the concept and could be done relatively quickly, but holds back a great deal on the execution. Or I could go for a much more ambitious approach that is closer matched the vision of the product.
The big question is where do you draw that crucial line? Once you’ve pushed your first release, you can’t take it back. You should always focus on releasing the least amount of product that successfully conveys your vision of what the product is. You want to give yourself as much room to iterate as possible, while still insuring that what you launch has a fair shot at succeeding. If you release too much, you may be stuck with a product that has placed too many big bets and ultimately ends up being off target once the user’s get a hold of it, not to mention you may never make it to launch due to longer development times. If you release too little, you could miss the mark and lose the momentum of the launch, when just a bit more execution could have spelled success.
Take the iPhone for example. If you started shaving away feature by feature, at what point would the vision be been lost on the initial release? Sure, many will say there is a lot missing on the iPhone, but it’s obvious they released enough to have deemed the launch a success while not giving away the farm. They’ve provided the least amount of product, while giving themselves plenty of room to iterate towards their (Steve’s) full vision. They got the product to market as fast as possible with enough arsenal to achieve the impact they were shooting for.
So what did I decide? Well, as of this post, I haven’t yet. In fact, I wrote this post as a way to clarify my thoughts on the matter. Being that I am more interested in the educational aspects of building this product than actually having a finished product out there, I’ll probably opt to take the more ambitious route with an option to scale back at the last minute if I get too anxious about launching it.
Update: I decided to shoot my previous post over to the guys at 37signals for a little advice. Here is what they had to say on the matter…
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/789-ask-37signals-when-do-i-launch