Get Your Butt Outta Bed and Build Something

In one of my entrepreneurial posts, a reader chastises me for not delivering any product so far,

OMG! You've been talking about starting this business forever! You have a penchant to just talk talk talk. How about do do do? Stop wasting e-ink and start hauling your e-ass outta bed everyday and build something... or maybe I misread you for something else than a part time pundit

The reality is that my product and libraries run only on the Whidbey runtime and Whidbey had been delayed a year and a half late. I am also not allowed to ship a product based on a beta runtime, small or large.

So, I spent my time developing my product with little regard for delivery dates. Since the product is the first version, the schedule is feature-driven, not date-driven; there’s also a significant research aspect to it as well, so making scheduling by dates difficult.

Now, that Whidbey has shipped, I no longer have an external excuse for not shipping. My original product concept is still quite a bit away. Because of the product’s size, I face considerable testing work and the prospect of a buggy first version.

The release of Whidbey provides more options. In order to get money coming in sooner and earlier external testing and feedback, my current strategy is to deliver a number of useful “subproducts” based on various portions of my main product. I aiming to deliver the first such subproduct in a month and a half time.

So, when the Big One does go into beta, much of the product will already have been tested and used by customers. This strategy of parallel development and testing is more organic and iterative.

 

Comments

[Alexander Groß]

You really mean VS Whidbey? It's been officially released on Nov. 7 *2005*. I suspect you are talking about Windows Vista...