Sharpen Your Timing in Developing Great Software

Many start-up companies create software or web sites that never see the light of day. Though running out of funding is one of the often sited reasons, many firms simply fail because they do not succeed in releasing great software applications on time.

By Wojtek Kowalczewski, Managing Partner of ConsulSoft Inc.

http://www.angel-investor-news.com/ART_sharpen.htm

Great Software

So what does great software mean? Great software requires a deep understanding of your feature requirements, market, and competition. Demonstrating an in-depth understanding of your area will help you raise Venture Capitalist funding. Even if you want to keep your idea secret, you must gain a firm understanding of your end users. This goes way beyond asking a few close friends in the IT field what they think of your concept. You need to spend time obtaining feedback from real potential end users. Properly executed Focus Groups and User Surveys are great starting points to understanding true market requirements. Building great applications is about viewing the product through the customers’ eyes.

Early Feature Definition

You are off to a good start by understanding your market requirements early. You will then build your specifications and early prototypes on a solid foundation. If instead you learn these facts after development has started, you will end up changing or even adding new features (also known as feature creep) in the middle of the development cycle.

The Features, Schedule, Resources Triangle

Building great software on time is about balancing Features, Schedule, and Resources. Being a start-up, or still trying to raise additional capital, your resources are rather limited. It is very easy to fall into the trap of continually adding more features while failing to release the initial version. Set the bar very high for what must be in the upcoming versions. You can always add features into future versions; in fact customers prefer it this way. If you do not release your application, you will not be able to start building your market share.

Realistic Scheduling

Being realistic about your schedule is critical, not only to you, but also more importantly to your investors. Even if you are in the most creative development environment, a milestones-based approach is key. Insist on having the developers outline what functionality will be completed by each milestone rather than a schedule being handed down from upper management. With each successive cycle, you will gain a better understanding of your development team’s scheduling accuracy. At the end of each milestone, the application should reach a pre-set level of minimum stability.

Bugs, Quality, and Testing

Unfortunately testing is the one aspect too often neglected by organizations. “We will stabilize in beta” is a term often heard from inexperienced teams. Your beta release provides the first impression of your software that may ultimately drive early adopters to use and endorse your product. Even if you cannot afford to have a dedicated quality assurance team, appoint a minimum of one person responsible for the quality of the software. Give equal recognition to members of the quality assurance as you give to the core development team. Bug tracking tools are essential; they need to monitor both the incoming and fixed rates. These in turn will give you a prediction not only when you will fix the known bugs, but also will give you a feeling how many bugs still remain to be found in the product.

Shipping is a Feature

If a certain product feature is causing delays either due to poor scheduling, quality, or simply due to its complexity, consider late feature cuts. It is better to ship a high quality version now and move onto the next or incremental version than to keep postponing the current release in an effort to include that last feature. This aspect is of course infinitely easier in web-based software than it is for classic off-the-shelf software based applications. In both cases, it is important though to realistically manage the expectations of your clients and your investors.

Helpful Resources

It is impossible to cover this entire subject in one article. There are many books written on product planning, defining requirements, development process, and releasing applications. Look for titles by Alan Cooper, Steve McConnell, Jim McCarthy, Steve Maguire, and others. You can find a compilation of popular titles here.

What to expect from a VC?

You have probably heard many times before that when seeking Venture Capitalist funding don’t only look at the capital they can provide to help you achieve rapid growth. Also look very carefully at the type of consulting expertise they can provide through their network to make your new venture a success. Finally, ask to speak to other companies they have invested in and find out first hand how good the advice they provided was.

Wojtek Kowalczewski is a Managing Partner at ConsulSoft Inc. (www.consulsoft.ca), Canadian‑based consulting firm specializing in Software Product and Process Improvement for rapid growth companies.