Life is created in 9 months, that is 36 weeks. This includes full quality assurance with over 99.999% accuracy that the product will function within specifications. It's taken thousands of years with little incremental modification to create a perfect product, the product of human life. It's the incremental changes, released every so often that make sure we survive as human beings. We call this the survival of fittest, the term coined by Herbert Spenser and Charles Darwin. Also, the reason the changes are incremental is because the product works well. So the old saying goes, why fix it when it's working.
Software product development is no different. If we cannot build and get a product to market within 9 months, then something is obviously wrong. To be precise, the human body takes 6 months to develop and 3 months to QA and fine tune. In similar terms, the survival of the fittest in product development is the methodology adapted by the company. If a wrong or over-complicated methodology is adopted, then we might as well say good-bye to the product even before building it.
The concept of incremental changes and visibility to product development is an important one. Toyota invented the concept called Kaizen, which is about making small incremental changes. This makes sure we pick the right problem to solve first. The problem that will result the highest yield or return. Life development does something similar. It just doesn't develop for 6 months. It incrementally checks to make sure that it is developing correctly. If there is a mistake, the body either self-corrects or aborts.
All in all, develop a product within 6 months or less and give 3 months or less for QA. During this time, continue to check on your progress and make incremental changes.
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9 comments:
Interesting points. But what happens when you are developing a totally new product from scratch? Are you suggesting that you need to get a product out first and not try to make it perfect first time around?
Great perspective... thought provoking to draw parallels with the greatest product development effort known to man :-)
Genial brief and this mail helped me alot in my college assignement. Thanks you for your information.
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