Build to the end and decide when to Release....

Attended the iDilute meeting last weekend, a meeting with some 6-7 odd highly energetic and intellignet brainstormers... One of the topic of discussion was around the success of various startups and products in todays competitive markets. While brainstorming products , methodologies , product management and development teams.. we discussed the best approaches that work for each of them. One of them i couldnt just stop myself from wiring over here... A topic that gets you in the war zones... How to decide your release dates...

Release dates Huh?, I believe a very instrumental element in the success of Product Management and ofcourse development teams.. So how do most of the products or companies define what they are releasing and when? Simple... They analyse the market, they find the feature that their customers like / need / want , They define the spec, they estimate , they plan a release date, they create a WBS , they scope and descope the features and wants and must haves, they start working on it and on the scheduled release date they release it[Most times this is a changed date]. In the middle a lot of things change... sometimes requirements, some times markets, sometimes products and sometimes visionaries... most of the time its time that changes, its customers demands that changes... a major killer in this approach is that the expectation changes... I realise when we started working in August '09 on the product we launched this year.. the expectation was to have a JUST new UI, when it reached towards its mid-phase the expectation changed to a MOST POWERFUL UI, when the delivery date neared the expectation was we are building THE MIRACLE PRODUCT. In the end satisfaction when compared with expectations is always 1: 1 milion , and you know which way it goes.... So then how do companies like Facebook work? How do they keep up to the expectations of their customers? How do they bring great features consistently and effectively... This meeting enlightened me of a smarter way they work... One of the attendees who also happens to be an ex-employee of #FB explained the approach of "Build to the end and release" i.e. Work on your product/module till it has neared the completion and then decide when to release it.

Smart, isnt it? pull a roadmap, punch an estimate for every feature [As a project] start working with the plan, be as much agile as you can, define requirements , evolve and once it is ready.. go ahead and say it is going to be ready in XXX days... then let the product team plan the communication and the release date.. Well so much of headache's it avoids for strong , disciplined agile teams...where features are built by what they are meant to do and not by how much we can fit in to the neck of development time available... The quorum debated over this, almost half of the attendees been the traditional managers for whom the only way to complete the thing was to plan it to th end... yet.. I found some real good points in this approach...

1. We all know that our poject costs overshoot the budgets - If you tell me you have always managed within budgets, I have to say you are lying.

2. We all know requirements change - Even if your spec writer is your own customer who wants what he writes.

3. We all know that we like to change and tweak , sometime reform what we built - Even if we say that there exists a CR procedure

4. We all know that we change scope, time or cost to achieve what we planned - Even if we say we did it right.

5. We all know that there are a bunch of angry , unhappy customers sitting there - Even if we write testimonials on our websites.

6. We all know we are atleast 10 years late - Even if we claim we are the first to reach there

When we know we do all of this...then isnt build until you done and then fix expectations a better approach? I remember how much i cursed this approach when one of the Product contact we use was not telling us the release date for the third party viewer software we were using for the Version 20 of their release... I wondered how they managed millions of users and hundreds of big clients... only to learn this year, that if you have to give out quality, you have to accept facts of development attitudes.

Now.. back to reality? Will this approach be adapted by smaller companies? By companies who has a shouting customer who will not renew their contract if X thing is not delivered by Y date? Well the decision is not on can this be done... the decision is Do we want quality....

I wish to trigger this some day, maybe not today... tomorrow definitely.

Thanks to the iDilute forum.

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Focus on your competition to FAIL!!!!

A lot of people think that keeping your competition in view is necessary for your business to succeed, a majority of this lot thinks that focusing on them means focusing on yourself.. in turn your too much focus on competition leads to SHIT your own quality...

Today I tweeted about something and could not stop myself from focusing on writing this blog away... I put my tweet below

When your focus is on competition, your quality is going SHIT. 5 yrs later#wadeshwar seems to have lost touch#pune #foodie

Yes.. After a long time, I took my time to shop for kids on the other side of the city. We happened to spent all our afternoon shopping hence hungry stomach's we decided to take a food break. Eventually of the Fergusson College Road specials like Vaishali Restaurant , Roopali Restaurant we chose the Wadeshwar (The first time I had been here was almost 5 yrs ago). The first few times and the few years later whenever I had been to this place I really enjoyed the food.

Now that the area surrounding this restaurant has further been crowded with several fast food restaurants, it seems that the competition on this road has tremendously increased. Eventually the competition has also changed the menu and the service.. in order to attract and accommodate crowd the sitting arrangement has been compressed, menu changed to challenge the competition... Finally I see that the authenticity and the ethnicity of this restaurant has been converted to a mix of the whole lot of restaurants that surrounds it. Terrible I must say.

It is no different to what is happening in the world of Internet... Google in attempt to focus on competition created by Facebook ended up investing and failing Buzz, Orkut. Facebook in order to take up the location based market ends up building Facebook Places (I believe this will fail). The Apple Ping is up to tackle change possessed by Twitter and Music world...

The result of all this focus is copy-over of features , unrequited competition, Race to cover market share and what not... but surely they don't realise that

1. Over the years Google is no more the ONLY favourite for people

2. Facebook grew but the growth is nearing the beginning of a negative line

3. Twitter growth is no more rocketing...

4. Be it Microsoft or be it Apple they are not sky rocketing or going to stop rocketing sooner or later...

Many such examples where it is clear that if you are busy keeping your focus on competition, you are going to end up creating a SHIT for yourself.

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5 reasons why not to link twitter with your linkedin and Facebook accounts

A few days ago linkedin had twitter integrated, when I logged into my profile I saw a whole bunch of friends linking tweets with linkedin. Whoa... isnt that the first thing you do when something gets hyped or over hyped? Facebook with twitter , linkedin with twitter , product portfolios with twitter and so on..... Eventually not only linkedin, everything thing that has status are now linked with twitter.

Eventually when you login to some profiles (include mine) al you would see is repetition of status across twitter , facebook , linked in.. in other words same info everywhere... I chose to unfollow those friends who have done so. Simple reason.. why see the same information everywhere...

Now this can cause you some followers, friends and good contacts or potential clients too... thus I am forced to give you 5 reasons not to do so.. at least not with Facebook and twitter.

1. Repetitive Information

I always felt that integrated twitter account helps a lot to manage your various status based social networks.. initially it started well... later it turned out to become a sort of unwanted link... for instance I followed the CXO of one of my previous clients over twitter , was a contact over linked in and of course a friend over FB, as time passed by it became apparent that I was only seeing info that I was seeing on twitter, to a matter that his blog also was showing nothing but tweets. Logically it was a waste following him on twitter and in my regular twitter cleanup exercise he got unfollowed. Why see same information again and again and at multiple places.

Moreover in terms of SEO this is of no benefit, eventually when twitter searches over google you may not find you high in ranks due to simple algorithm logic of duplicate content.

2. Dead Profiles

Profiles that are usually updated via twitter are less interested as the walls would show nothing but your twitter status. These profiles can be so dead that if your friends and contacts may decide to leave you. This usually happens with the Fan Pages. having your product twitter account and Facebook Fan page may result in duplicates and people may want to go to one source of information. This also comes with a fact that with several integration options you become too lazy to update relevant information across platforms.

3. No split in general, professional or social status

You may think that it is good to have them integrated but if you really want to link then choose what to link. Tools like Selective Tweets help you do that... this way you can limit the type of information (which could be very personal) going to your accounts (that are supposed to reveal your professional part). A friend of mine tweeted about how he hates his work, eventually his twitter account linked to linkedin. Over professional business networking platforms will be corrupted with unwanted personal tweets.. sometimes over hundreds of them in a day.

4. Confuse self , Confuse others

Imagine a housewife friend, a non internet savy who connects to your facebook profile only... what will happen if they see thousands of tweets all over your FB page or profile? Specially if you are a seasoned twitterer your profiles are going to confuse the only time visitors.

5. Dont get Hired , Soon get fired

If your linked in account says how much you hate your job, You are not getting hired and may soon be fired. This is due to the fact that many organizations over a period of time have started considering doing certain research about candidates they interview or new employees that are going to be part of their teams on internet and social networking sites. This gives a very bigger perspective of personal side of the members.. We ended up rejecting 2 potentially good technical resources as their social networking status revealed a greater sense of negative attitude and some statuses also revealed how much they hated working over certain things.

Not only this if you are tweeting how much you hate your company , Boss , employer and linking it to your FB or twitter you sooner or later going to loose your job.

Now before you go ahead and link your various social network sites with your twitter account, think, you may be watched, you may be writing on things that you dont want some people to know. Even loose your job and web credibility.

So what do you want to do?

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