Wil Shipley
His ass is poignant. But unless you’ve watched this, you won’t get the reference. Weak, I know. However, his analogies about the subtleties of running a software business are spot on. He explains how the things you half-thought might be a good idea, end up being just the opposite. For instance, it’s not a good idea to show your product to others for review if you have known bugs…
I figured I’d get some early feedback by showing my webapp to some friends. They should have no problem being honest with me, right? Though there were still a few rough spots I intended to clean up, and a few bugs I was well-aware of, I gave them demo access anyway. To my surprise, they found these well-known problem areas and stopped there, thinking they had done their job. It was definitely not what I was expecting. Instead, I hoped they would thoroughly walk through my app, peer into the parts I was particularly proud of, tell me “good job” on those areas, find a new bug or two, and suggest improvements for the stickier UI areas. Nope.
When the known bugs are so glaring and easy to find, they seem really big. If they’re not fatal to usage of the app, it doesn’t matter. If they’re easy to fix, it doesn’t matter. If you tell your beta testers about the known bugs before-hand … well, don’t waste your time. Better yet, don’t waste the time of your reviewers. Fix the bugs first, and then do the beta/demo thing. If only I’d watched Wil’s presentation first. Now I know.
But that’s only part of the story. Here’s a thought:
What if I announce a beta program NOW? I bet I’ll get at least a few interested testers by the time I’m ready to actually have something for them to test.
So I did that, but it turns out I lack two of the most important things to make a simple beta program successful: an audience and a track record.
Along similar lines, in the future I’ll stick to the approach I take with my open source projects: keep quiet until I have something to show. A Wil Shipley analogy can help here. Imagine you’re at a conference, and someone comes up to you and says:
Hey! I’ve got something awesome to show you! Can you meet me in the back room? Tomorrow?
Stellar analogy. I continue to have nothing that’s ready to show for all my effort. It’s not a situation I’m comfortable being in. I hate to think someone might assume I’ll serve up nothing but vaporware.