Question
Hey everyone, I'm a software developer and have been leading the development of an application which revolves around child behavioral tracking and pattern detection. Aside from picking a name for our new application and securing the domain we've been focused solely on prototyping the first version of the application. It involves quite a bit of data visualization challenges so we were eager to roll our sleeves up and start coding. The initial progress has been great, our technology stack is defined and our initial prototype is extremely elegant under the hood but we are currently at somewhat of a standstill.
Having worked at agencies for the majority of my career I've been somewhat spoiled in that by the time I'm writing code everything from the branding to the personas, use cases, and wire-framing has been completed. We skipped all of that due to sheer idiocy on my part or extreme excitement for what we want to achieve, not sure which, probably both :o)
My question is having jumped way ahead into the software development lifecycle, should we continue to sprint along until we get a MVP that we know we wont be happy with fairly soon or reign it in and enlist the help of both a UX and UI design resource and not worry so much about when the app can launch?
Thanks in advance for any advice!
-Mike Ellan
Answer
IMO i've been where you are. CTOing all-in-code. But i'm not sure i found an immediately obvious way. Because it was not just my way, it has to be teams/startup's way.
Having some mostly working software that can be used as prototype and show-of-concept is good. Very good. Don't throw it away. Keep building it, Maybe slower.
In paralel, try to find what really you all want. And What is missing. Involve some possible wanna-be users. (Who are the users? Are they just one kind - or there is some completely sidetrack group that has not been forgotten? e.g. admins? statisticians?).
What aspects are weak? Is it about features, usability, product, technology, customers, marketing, maintainability, proper spec, some-future-in-2-years, shiny looks, bells-and-whistles, whatever. Then Prioritize those. Or maybe first Prioritize the aspects, from business perspective, and then find how much each one is covered or not.
We can talk more if u want. Even if only helping you identify your own problems - or just fears.
Have fun.