Getting to launch

Are we there yet?

How do you make time for a project that doesn’t pay and doesn’t have a client asking when it will be finished when you have lots of paying client projects? Right now we’re in the process of bootstrapping our first web application, and let me tell you, it isn’t easy to make time and retain momentum.

In the past we’ve worked on (and never launched) two other web applications. We launch client projects on time every month though. So what gives? Here are a few of the lessons from our unshipped web applications:

1. When there is no “client”, it’s easy to want to add “just this one more thing” before shipping. Or even more likely, a whole laundry list of additional features that seem “essential” to the product being successful. A list that never ends.
2. When there is no “client”, there is no deadline and no one bugging you wanting to know “are we there yet?”.

So in short, the equation looks something like this:

Infinitely flexible scope + infinitely flexible timeline = a product that never ships

So what is the solution? We haven’t launched yet, so I can’t claim to be an expert, but here are a few things that are helping us get there.

Decide what’s in (and what’s out)

Follow your standard procedure for locking in scope like you would on any other client project. For us, that meant producing a detailed estimate of exactly what we would do before launch. The important part of this exercise is that it forced us to say what we wouldn’t do before launch.

Decide when you’ll launch

In our case, we’ve been using this product internally since February, so most of the work towards launch relates to polishing and preparing the application to work for multiple subscribers (it’s a subscription web application). Choose a date you’d like to have it ready for public launch or at least for a private, invite-only beta.

Next, figure out how many hours you can realistically work on the application between now and the launch date.

Face reality

Here’s where it’s critical to apply discipline. Compare the hours you have before launch to the hours you expect it will take to complete the scope you’ve outlined. If you’re good at estimating time required and half as excited about launching as we are, there’s a good chance your “hours to launch” estimate will greatly exceed your “available hours before launch”. Consider it a blessing! As Mike McDerment of Freshbooks says, you can’t take a feature away once you give it to your customers. Better to take anything that isn’t absolutely essential out now.

We went through this process twice and each time cut the scope about in half.

How we’re doing

We now have about 25% of our estimated scope time left, but we’ve passed our target private beta launch date by a couple of weeks. That means that we had a lot less time available (or made a lot less time available) than we expected. The next step is to begin setting aside time proactively each week just like we do for client projects. I’ll keep you posted!

Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it. – Joel Spolsky

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