Release it already…
- Posted November 10th, 2008
- Filed under: How We Do It
Riffing off last weeks post Buying into Batchbook post I also wanted to touch on something I think is extremely important for any start up trying to break into the world of SaaS.
For a lot of folks used to working at large, slow-moving companies, the idea of releasing code every week (or even every month for that matter) is a foreign idea. Many obstacles are usually in one’s way, whether it be sign off on every little detail by the CEO (or those in charge of the project) or things like getting IT on-board to quicken the pace of their release cycle.
In my opinion, this is a quick way to kill your product—especially when competing in a crowded space like we do here at BatchBlue. Being nimble and agile enough to react to market needs and feedback is crucial to keep the little guys like us in the game. We are competing with companies with huge tech resources, large mind share and the ability to throw lots of money at the problem. It is a daunting assignment going against the big boys and trying to change the market’s view on the product you are offering.
We have one HUGE advantage, though. We can move much more quickly and we should take full advantage of that. Here at BatchBlue, we feel pretty strongly about not having milestone-style development. Schedules, for most things, do not work for us because our focus can change from week to week depending on user feedback or market changes. Getting attached to a release cycle of ‘Get blah done on 11/25/08′ has proven to be a quick path to developers feeling undue pressure and unrealistic expectations put on the team as a whole.
Our project is ‘Make BatchBook the most flexible, cost-effective and user-friendly CRM/Contact Manager on the planet’. Something as simple as changing a style on a link to big things like launching 3rd party integrations all fit under that umbrella. We honestly will never fully reach that goal and will always be innovating to make the BatchBook experience better, so why tie the team down to ‘you must get this done on such a such date’?
Don’t get me wrong, we do have long term large goals/features we want to get into BatchBook, but just focusing on those big goals would make us miss a lot of smaller things that can incrementally make BatchBook so much better. Rigid project plans can leave no room for those small things that are so important to getting users to buy into your product.
We meet every Monday and go over the week plan. A big part of this is to take into account feedback from our support queue and forums, which can drastically alter our development for the week. A couple examples of this would be the recent MailChimp integration and batch actions on To-Dos. These were really not being planned to be worked on for another month or so but user feedback pushed us to move them up the queue. We were able to take in the feedback and develop these things in under a week’s time and they have been very well received. Well worth the shuffling of our feature queue and getting them out there.
We push once a week and firmly believe it is important to show our users that BatchBook is very much a living product and will always be under development. It also takes the pressure off always having to be perfect. We usually lean on the side of the simplest thing possible and then refining it based on user feedback. With big launch release schedules it creates much more pressure to be perfect every time because you never know when you can release code again to correct any issues. By releasing early and often it mitigates the pressure to be perfect out of the box, and your users also have the confidence that if something needs updating or tweaked it will be days/weeks and not months/years before that happens.
We also are finding this style development has really enhanced the community around our product. Users are more willing to provide feedback as they know they will not be ignored. We really do listen and our release schedule confirms that. Great things happen on a weekly basis here at BatchBlue.
So just release it already, your users will thank you for it.
This is really cool! I work for a web startup and we follow the milestone release schedule pretty religiously. We’re not quite as small as you guys though. Do you think you’ll always have the informal release schedule even when you guys grow? I really like that users can feel like they’re making a difference in your produce at this stage and that everyone gets such individualized responses. Keep it up
Hello Stacia,
I doubt we will change as long as I am around. I could see a split into smaller teams as we grow but the mandate would still be the same. Release all the time. Larger companies like amazon and google are starting to adopt this mindset but it really takes buy-in from the top on down.
Who knows though what will happen down the line though. Like our loose release schedule, things are always up for debate
-sean