Product Development

Product Development - From the perspective of a software engineer.

Transcript

1. From the perspective of a software engineer
   Product Development
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2. Michael Cheng
   Senior Software Engineer, mig33
   http://twitter.com/coderkungfu
   http://github.com/miccheng
   http://CoderKungfu.com
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3. Speaker Deck
   https://speakerdeck.com/
   miccheng/product-development
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4. Practical Tips
   What I've learnt building Foound... and then some.
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5. About Foound
   • Won “best of show” at Echelon 2010.
   • Raised US$500K in Sept 2010.
   • Launched at DEMO Fall (in Silicon
   Valley).
   • Failed to gain traction beyond early
   adopters.
   • Relaunched as FoundApp in Sept
   2011.
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6. Value creation vs
   Value destruction
   Are you making a dent in the universe or just hoarding
   resources?
   Test your hypotheses before you commit to building
   them.
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7. Early adopters vs
   Mainstream users
   Who's your audience? Who are you creating value for?
   Early adopters are more forgiving. They bring the viral.
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8. Short iterations vs
   Long drawn stealthiness
   Get it in front of an audience as soon as possible.
   The worst thing you do is build something that nobody
   wants.
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9. User feedback, real metrics
   vs
   What YOU think
   Nuff' said.
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10. Low fidelity vs
    High fidelity
    You can only polish your product up to a point where
    your audience needs.
    If you can’t make a decision with low-fidelity mockups,
    chances are you won’t be able to do so with high-fidelity
    ones either.
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11. Pivot vs Persevere
    It takes courage and fearlessness to do it either way.
    Pivoting isn't a SIN. Failure to pivot in the face of
    offending data is a SIN.
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12. 6 Tips for Managing
    Development Teams
    Cos they make your startup tick.
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13. Managing a
    development team
    • Clear directions (you point, we fire).
    • Validation events (what metric do you want to
    move).
    • No kitchen sink wish list please. Prioritize.
    (eg. 70 half-baked/broken features vs 17 fully usable features.)
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14. Managing a
    development team
    • Use Kanban project management for best
    visibility on progress. (eg. Pivotal Tracker)
    • Continuous delivery lets you move and test
    your features faster.
    • Test Driven Development gives you stable
    software (most of the time).
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15. Test Driven Development
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16. Questions?
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17. Communities
    • Hackerspace Singapore
    • Singapore PHP User Group
    • Drupal / Wordpress User Group
    • Python User Group
    • Ruby Brigade
    • Singapore JS Group
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