I’ve been banging the drum for simplicity for some time, and a couple of posts caught my attention this week. Ryan at 37signals was discussing the suckage-to-usage ratio with the Kindle keyboard as an example of a feature that might be inadequate on its own but infrequently used and thus unimportant in the reading experience. The post speaks to nailing the important requirements first, leaving the nice-to-haves for later (if ever). Users are willing to put up with missing features in exchange for (1) getting a product in their hands faster and (2) nailing the requirements that are truly important to them.
Over at Wired there’s a story on Duke Nukem Forever (NSFW), what is (was) supposed to be the sequel to the legendary videogame Duke Nukem 3D. After a decade of development, the game still hasn’t shipped. What held it up? The developers couldn’t lock the design down, constantly adding/changing features. Compounding matters, they had an unheard-of budget that let them get away with feature creep for years. Constraints can be your friend, forcing you to work on the important stuff first and to actually deliver.
I always think about the 80% solution when I’m confronted with something new. Chances are it’s going to take a lot more time and resources to get that last 20% of features/requirements added, so deliver the important stuff first and challenge that last 20%. Steve Jobs said “real artists ship”–keep it as simple as you can and don’t let feature creep get in the way of delivery.