[Sigia-l] Lifespan

[Listera]

Darin Sullivan:

> So the notion of disposable doesn't quite
> apply even though we encourage upgrade to increase
> customer satisfaction.

Recently, I was asked to look at the product strategy/architecture/interface
of the main app for a startup company. Though well-funded, the company is
driven by one their founders who happens to be a programmer. His
inclinations are to detail everything, place hooks for every eventuality and
essentially 'build for the future.'

I told them that, yes, the product may scale in the future but, at this rate
of progression, the company may never get there. In other words, in their
geeky zeal for building for the future, they have lost their focus for
designing a product for actual shipping. If they don't have a shipping
product that can generate revenue, the rest is pretty much academic.

This is a very, very tough issue. Striking the right balance among feature
sets, market realities, scalability, usability, etc., is difficult. It's
tough to advise someone to build an app they know they'll have to discard in
a couple of years. It sounds counterintuitive.

> A related question I have is whether an application whose
> ease of use is its claim to fame (presents a small set of
> tasks very efficiently and clearly) should be upgraded
> with anything other than performance enhancements?

I'm designing one such platform of apps at the moment. It's extremely
modular, so one can deal with individual modules separately and, to a large
extent, asynchronistically. That's one approach that works if you can
segment your app.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba