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07 Aug 09

Practicing product minimalism - garry's posterous

garry.posterous.com/practicing-product-minimalism - Preview

minimalism simplicity

I clarified: "Well, features aren't always right. Sometimes they're done wrong, or they don't really fit what the user really wants. Do we ever remove features?"
Features got removed in other ways though. If nobody really used them, they were obviously chopped out and memorialized as a bullet point in the release notes. But that wasn't really my question. Those are the easy ones to chop.
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- A product gets bloated not because the obviously bad features stick around. They're bloated because there are features that are barely OK in there. They're not complete. They aren't done correctly. Maybe the UI is wrong, or the internal states aren't thought out well enough, or don't match what the user expects. And there are egos attached, too. A poor PM's ego, at the least,and maybe a dev and a tester's self worth too. An entire feature team might have emotional stakes in that feature.
- This can be avoided. Go deep on the things that matter. Do less with less. Be minimal in scope and maximal in completeness.
- Minimalism to me isn't necessarily DOING less, but PRODUCING less. Sometimes coming up with a solution that is simpler takes more effort, because bloat is easy to accomplish for the sake of feeling like you're doing something worthwhile.
  Come to think of it, my most successful projects have been ones with an exact, clear objective. One action that helps benefit the customer immediately and directly. Things that have garnered critiques saying "that's too simple; it's stupid."