We chose to roll the 37signals Suite out in stages. Right now you can actually only upgrade to the suite. You need to have one of the existing products and then you go to your account screen and you click upgrade. That was a way for us to cut down a little bit of the complexity in this. This was already a long running project, [so the question was]: How can we get it out now rather than just spend another three months on it?
Danny
on 29 Nov 10I find this quote amusing given your it’s done when it’s done mantra that you have touted in the past.
You were obviously feeling pressure to get this suite out in the market and made a compromise to get something out.
JF
on 29 Nov 10Danny: It was done enough. It’s never completely done until it’s dead.
Danny
on 29 Nov 10Cool JF, I like the work you guys do, hence me reading your blog daily. I just find some of your messages to be a bit naive and this was one were I saw your own message getting tripped up a little.
JF
on 29 Nov 10What’s naive?
Dylan
on 29 Nov 10Seems perfectly inline with their belief it’s better to get something out and tweak and improve later?
Joris
on 30 Nov 10Makes perfect sense, as half the value “now” is pretty much always better than the full value “later”.
I would guess that the people who are most likely to want the Suite, are existing customers. For them an upgrade would be the only path possible anyway.
Danny
on 01 Dec 10This was already a long running project, [so the question was]: How can we get it out now rather than just spend another three months on it?
Danny
on 01 Dec 10Sorry for the part post the comments system wiped out two paragraphs that I had below it.
The quote above is what stood out for me in the post, with regards to the it’s done when it’s done mantra my thoughts were why should it matter if it takes another three months to get out the product you want to deliver. But on reflection it does fit with other ideas you put forward as the other comments have pointed out.
@JF: With regards to the naive comment, your “Caveats, disclaimers, and other preemptive strikes” section of Getting Real does a good job of laying out why I think that. In particular, the way that you deliver your messages and the fact that they are based on your personal experience and to my mind exclude a lot of other bodies of knowledge and peoples experiences make some of your messages naive.
Jaime
on 01 Dec 10@Danny: You’re misinterpreting pretty much everything. The mantra is not “Only release when it’s done”. It’s actually “Release as soon as you have a MVP you’re happy with and is a welcome addition to your service”. In this case you have various options 1) release too early (with a buggy or incomplete product), 2) release too late (with a throughly complete product and seamless integration), or 3) release a working product or feature when it’s complete enough to provide value to your customers, even if the feature-set or integration is not yet complete.
It’s better to have the suite now, though you’d need to already have a paying account (which is probably a moot point anyways), than to have the same functionality in three months because of some grunt work that had to be done to get the seamless integration out the door. In contrast, the other possibility was to release it before it was production ready and risk having all sorts of trouble and loose business because of it.
The 37 signals guys got things right: release often, but make sure that your release of features adds value to all parties involved. This is not a ‘compromise’ per se, nor is the message negating anything they’ve said before – and it certainly is not naive.
Danny
on 02 Dec 10@Jaime: In my opinion the decision was one of compromise, it was a compromise between releasing what 37signals saw as the full product they wanted to release originally and whether they could release what they had and still give the market something that had value. The decision in my view is a completely valid one but not the only one that could have been made and not the only one that would have stood up to scrutiny when examined against the 37signals teachings. For example what if they had of made the decision to wait 3 months and release the original intended product feature set, the rational for that decision could have been WE are not happy with the product and it will be ready when we are ready to release it, not when the market says we have to release it.
Also to be clear I like a lot of what the 37signals guys say and I definitely think they make great products and do a great job of marketing themselves and their products. But I don’t always agree with what they say because I think the hard line approach they take in their delivery of some of those messages excludes a lot of valid alternatives and that is what makes those messages seem naive to me.
This discussion is closed.