September, 2008

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30
Sep 08

Concept Products

Counter Notions has an interesting write-up on Why Apple doesn’t do “Concept Products”

It turns out that when capable designers are given real constraints for real products they can end up creating great results. In Apple’s case, groundbreaking products like the iMac, the iPod and the iPhone. Constraints have a wonderful way of focusing the mind on the fundamentals, whereas concept products can often have the opposite affect.

Concept products are like essays, musings in 3D. They are incomplete promises. Shipping products, by contrast, are brutally honest deliveries. You get what’s delivered. They live and die by their own design constraints. To the extent they are successful, they do advance the art and science of design and manufacturing by exposing the balance between fantasy and capability.

I wonder if the same could be said for pilot projects. Is it better to release a product to your customers (internal or otherwise) in a partially complete state, or keep your cool and release nothing until it is ready to ship?

Another option (more available for software development and less risky with your customers) is the Agile approach. Instead of bundling many perfect enhancements for a knock-their-socks-off release, regularly release small and not-quite-perfect functioning enhancements. If it isn’t quite what they wanted on this upgrade, no worries – the next upgrade is only a week or two away. 

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29
Sep 08

Abalastow Compendium

Eric - Abalastow Compendium. Though I don’t know that my little blog will help that much. Good luck!

For my regular readers – The folks at UMN are running a search engine optimization project. I thought I’d help out a bit with this tiny little post. Thanks for humoring me!

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28
Sep 08

Agile Portfolio Management

Bob Payne over at the Agile Toolkit had an excellent interview with Johanna Rothman about her new book on agile portfolio management and the Agile 2009 Conference. In Rothman’s recent post:

… the idea of a project for software is an artifical construct – our consumers buy running tested features, that we happen to package in a project to release as a product.

I’ve really got to get around to reading some of her books. She articulates so clearly the pain of waterfall development and how agile projects overcome them.

Anyone going to the Agile 2009 Conference in Chicago? A couple years ago the conference was here in the Twin Cities, and I’m still bummed to have missed it. 

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26
Sep 08

Windows Mobile switching to iPhone

Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine is switching to an iPhone magazine.

… we have no plans to publish future Windows Mobile issues. [...] Our focus in 2009 will be the four scheduled iPhone Life issues, which we will publish under the umbrella title of Smartphone Magazine. 

A single magazine is no definitive way to tell what an industry is doing, but it certainly gives you pause as to the future of Windows Mobile.

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24
Sep 08

World of Content Infinity

Seth started collecting “pictures of crowds stunned by a baseball bat heading their way”. The strange thing: it is possible to collect such pictures. He writes Getting used to infinity:

All of us grew up in a world of content scarcity, and now we live in a world of content infinity. [...] It means that finding a photo of what you’re looking for isn’t the hard part, it’s deciding what to look for in the first place.

The same could be said for just about anything. Music, Kitchen Appliances, or Software Development Tools. Deciding what to look for – or where to start – is the hard part. Call it the role of the curator. The ability to understand what you want before you know how to find it – is much more important in every field.

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