DEV-PL : Formula to Build almost anything
Whether you are building a software product or designing for a new managed service, or even an engine for a car, the basic building blocks for development approach remains more or less same. Covering the basics is the most important aspect of the approach. Sharing below few steps from my experience which I believe are useful in building anything. The formula of ‘DEV-PL’.
DEFINE: Articulate in clear words the exact objective of what you are building. Answer more than 4 ‘Whys’ correctly and convincingly that the market needs what you are developing. Understand the clear value that will be generated with what you are building. Write that down as well. Do not let the current limitations of the existing environment define your thinking at this stage. Write down your assumptions associated with the working of your objective. And before you do anything, ensure your assumptions are correct. Most of the failures are because of wrong assumptions. Run a survey, ask people, run mock test – but it is important to get your assumptions validated. Now write what would be the criteria for failure of the project or stop-loss criteria. Having this clarity at this stage is of critical nature. Articulate in clear words, what test would fail, to tell you that you should stop investing time and energy on that project. If you don’t define the stop-loss condition at this stage, your criteria will be influenced by the results of the actions you undertake and might be a technical limitation instead of business value.
Once this is done, stick the objective, assumptions, stop-loss criteria on your desk and dive right into the exploration stage.
EXPLORE: Whatever you are starting – start with an attitude of exploration. There are people who have done it, or similar things before you, and you don’t need to re-invent the wheel, use the wheel you find to build a bicycle, don’t put the time in building the wheel again. Explore what competitors are working on, what can take you ahead of them. What is that the market wants? Are you solving a customer issue or you are indulging in a technology lesson for yourself? Check out the trends. Read the forecasts, read the numbers associated with it. Mix concepts from the neighbouring domain, and cook something new. It is important that you involve a UX person in the team right from the beginning. Regardless of what you are working on, it is important to invest in designing your product which is sensitive to human needs and desires. Experiment. Explore.
VALIDATE: Validate what you are doing with lots of sample population, right from concepts, to your prototype – friends, foes, customers, bosses, anyone. But validate, and re-validate. Don’t get too deep in your passion to a point that it is your personal entertainment thing. Whatever you are making, there will be users for it. And you need to check if they are liking it, what are their feelings associated with your product. Take the feedback, record the reactions, read the data. If need be, go back to the drawing board. Ensure you have the best person(s) in the team. Keep tweaking, keep validating, till you get something that works for most of the defined conditions.
PERSIST & BUILD on FIRST TWO: The world out there is not always welcoming of your ideas, and you might not have the resources or the motivation of your boss to take your ideas ahead. What do you do? Persist. Persist. Learn the ART of Influencing. Prepare data, make your points, understand what it takes to convince your stakeholders. Work on it. Ensure you are doing the background homework before you make your point. Stop the expectation that people will be sympathetic to your cause, or it pains them same the way it does to you. Or they see the same things which you see. Maybe the iceberg the Titanic is going to hit is transparent and only you can see that. So how do you bring the attention of your captain to save the lives of all the people on-board?
LEARN to LEAVE: It is very important to understand when to leave and yes, it is exactly opposite to point 3. While it is important to persist, it is also important to check the stop-loss criteria. If your project fails the stop-loss test, be ruthless and drop the project. Not all situations are as dramatic, as saving the Titanic from hitting the transparent iceberg. It is critical to understand to drop the ball and check on a new opportunity. Moving on to the new. If you are not ruthless enough, you keep sticking to a lost cause and it just throws you off track, while the same time could be used in doing something more meaningful. Time to start a new exploration journey!