So You've Got a Software Idea...Now What?
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A quick guide to evaluating and executing on software ideas. For the execution piece, I touch upon Agile methodologies like iterative development and writing user stories
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So You've Got a Software Idea...Now What?
- 1. So You’ve Got a Software Idea... Now What? Dan Pickett
- 2. Ideas are easy... Identifying Ideas Worth Doing Is Hard! ...And building them is even harder
- 3. Now What? • Problems Worth Solving • Identify Who Cares? • Do the Simplest Thing That Works • Tell a Story with Sketches and Words • Ship
- 5. Unbaked Ideas... • Have you talked to a potential customer? • Are you willing to make the investment? • Have you put it on paper? • Do you know what you’re doing?
- 6. Unthought Out Ideas... “The Next Twitter” “Like LinkedIn, but with Facebook Features” “We’re hoping Google will acquire us” “We’ll Make Our Money on Advertising”
- 8. ...Or Dominate a Niche? • Make your users money • Eliminate a pain point
- 9. Oh yeah, and... CHARGE FOR IT!!!
- 10. Who Cares?
- 13. Conceptualization •Identify the problem • Brainstorm on solutions • Sketch Ideas
- 15. Brainstorming Fundamentals • There are no dumb ideas • Don’t criticize other people’s ideas • Build on other people’s ideas • It’s about quantity, not quality • Have a facilitator that enforces rules above
- 16. Mind Maps
- 17. It’s about brain power...
- 18. Identify a Core Asset • Above all else, what do my customers need? • ...Be brutal in slashing features
- 21. Rules for Sketching •Thick Strokes • Annotate • Walk Away
- 25. Words Matter... http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterwalshprojects/ Maintain a Glossary
- 26. Words Matter... http://www.flickr.com/photos/enovember/3471675615/ Tell A Story
- 27. User Stories
- 28. “ I believe that the hardest part of software projects, the most common source of project failure, is communication with the customers and users of that software ” - Martin Fowler
- 29. What’s a user story? • indicates the person who is seeking some type of value from the software • describes functionality that delivers that value • includes acceptance criteria that elaborates on how the value is realized
- 30. User Stories As a ... In order to... I want to ... As a... So that ... I want to... As a registered Barcamp Attendee I want to choose the talks I’m attending So that interested friends can see where I’m going
- 31. User Stories Independent Negotiable Valuable to users or customers Estimatable Small Testable
- 33. Convey Stakeholder Expectations • I should see a list of talks grouped by time slot • I should be able to select a talk as one I’m attending • I should be able to link to the talk
- 34. More on User Stories
- 35. Track
- 36. Ship It If it doesn’t ship, it doesn’t exist.
- 37. Iterate
- 38. “ As the number of people on a project increases, however, so does the number of communication paths. It doesn’t increase additively, as the number of people increases, it increases multiplicatively, proportional to the square of the number of people. ” - Steve McConnell
- 39. Remember... • Keep it simple • Put it on paper before you put it into pixels • Have conversations, don’t write huge documents • Pay attention to process
- 40. Thanks!!! Twitter: @dpickett Site: www.enlightsolutions.com Email: dpickett@enlightsolutions.com