“Fail fast, fail cheap” learn it, and put it in practice

The smart folks over at Curious Office have a good post today about user needs and how it relates to marketing.

I cannot overstate how important it is to remember the “fail fast, fail cheap” idea embedded in many Agile/XP programming methodologies and how well that mantra can be applied to new ventures. Feature bloat has been a problem with my projects in the past, and I’m finding much better success in breaking down a project into “what’s good enough” type of packages. If launching an application with features 1-10 would take 1 year to develop, could the market be better served in 3 months with an application that has only features 1-3? If so, wouldn’t it be better to launch a shorter-featured application and allow the userbase to provide feedback on what new features should come next? Perhaps the users don’t want feature #4, and without launching fast (and cheaply), I would have wasted time and resources on an unwanted feature.

I recommend reading the Curious Office post. You can never learn too much about marketing and timeliness. I certainly am a shining example of that need to learn.