In “The E-Myth” Michael Gerber states that one of the principle mistakes young entrepreneurs make is that they keep on working “in” the business and wondering why their business isn’t taking off.
There’s no doubt I’m working deeply “in” the business.
I just dont know if I am making a mistake thinking that I cant work “on” the business until I complete certain benchmarks “in” the business.
I dont think I am making a mistake. But I do “feel” Ambisonia’s audience losing patience with the lack of progression of the site.
I have to come up with a way to “communicate” the evolution / progression of the site. It _is_ evolving, but I am currently doing all the development on a separate “development” server. This means that when the changes get deployed, the site will be unrecognisable (in a good way). But they wont get deployed for several months, because many of the changes are structural.
hmmm … I’m going to think about this. Would it be better for evolution to be deployed incrementally.
4 responses so far ↓
Martin // January 8, 2008 at 9:54 pm |
“Would it be better for evolution to be deployed incrementally.”
Yes, *where* *possible*.
Deploying incrementally gets you early user feedback, which then modifies your requirements. Incremental deployment is the only way to go when you have a specification that evolves. Otherwise you develop something which, by the time you release it, is already out of date.
Having said this, you have to release the structural stuff in one go otherwise there in’ts anything for the users to use. The trick is to do the minimum that results is a usable product. Then get it out there. If you want the fancy words look up “Scrum
development”. You will be doing a Solo Scrum.
Etienne Deleflie // January 8, 2008 at 10:58 pm |
Martin, havn’t heard of the term ’scrum development’ before … which is interesting because I’m aware (and use, professionally) many of the key characteristics of it (as described on Wikipedia).
It _is_ difficult with the current phase of development of Ambisonia to release incrementally because there _are_ structural changes.
But it is also very true that if I dont get a particular new feature out quick enough, then the direction of the site changes and that feature can become irrelevant… but I’ll never know whether it would have had any traction with users.
hmmm … ok, maybe I’ll re-jig my project plan to see what I can deploy incrementally.
Martin // January 10, 2008 at 6:47 pm |
Scrum Development is an agile technique so builds on, and has much in common, with what has gone before. Even Microsoft uses an agile methodology (they use three-monthly milestones).
And, no, we are not losing patience. Ambisonics has been around since the late 1970s. Over the decades, we have developed lots of patience. Simply having a site from which B-Format files can be downloaded is a tremendous advance. You need to improve things to make the site commercial, but that will be a bonus. What you have already given us is stunning.
Etienne Deleflie // January 10, 2008 at 11:59 pm |
thanks Martin
well, the good news is that I am not losing patience with Ambisonia as well. Its been over 2 years and my interest and inspiration is currently stronger than ever …
I was worried the baby would kill off the effort entirely, but since I started using time management strategies, I am actually finding it relatively easy to keep moving, and this time without stress.