Release Early and Often

Below is the blue theme that NStatic applications uses.

I just went through removing a number of nonessential features from my product in order to focus on timely delivery of the first version. These features will appear in a later free update, but their presence in the initial version is simply delaying my revenue stream. 

This issue of “release early and often” arises frequently in blog posts; some of the more memorable posts I have read on the topic include the following:

Eric Sink answers through his Business of Software series post “Finding Product Ideas” on how long it should take to build the product.

You also want to get to market as quickly as possible. How many months will you need to build version 1.0 of your product? It is usually better to keep the 1.0 feature set as small as possible so you can get your product out in the market sooner. If you can't get a sellable 1.0 out the door within six months or so, look carefully before you leap.

One of my own personal favorite product ideas has this problem. The market position is good, and I know the product would sell. But it would probably require around two years of full-time effort before I could release version 1.0. That's a long time to wait for the first dollar of revenue and the first real customer feedback.

Aaron has a contrarian post on Release Late, Release Rarely, supported by Don Dodge’s own view of the evolution of software companies in SaaS delivers functionality faster and cheaper.

 

Comments

[Judah]

It's hard to let 1.0 out the door. The company I work for has a business app with a really big, abitious feature set our small team has developed for more than 2 years. Fortunately, we're close(r) to release now. :)