I recently put on my nerd hat and began learning some code again. For quite some time, I’ve heard about a book titled, “Getting Real,” by 37 Signals that focuses on pragmatic strategies when developing software. This book has been around for a while, and I actually read it a while back, but I decided to read it again.
Truly, whether you’re an investor, manager, business development specialist, painter, musician or attorney (…I take that back…jk…but seriously), you’ll find value in this book.
Here are the most important lessons I’ve extracted:
- Just build it (Don’t plan to work, work)
- Most of what you think is essential, really isn’t
- Avoid useless paperwork
- Don’t “one up” your competition – compete on results, not bulky features
- Under-do your competition
- Don’t do something that’s money-driven; people can read through the lines
- Avoid clunky mass by doing less, multitasking with a cross-functional team, have an open culture, don’t hold any meetings, don’t have silo’s either, allow alone time
- Team of three: developer, designer, sweeper (roam between the two)
- Work from large to small
- Don’t waste time on problems you don’t have yet
- Scale later (unless you’re twitter lol)
- From idea to implementation: (i) paper napkin mockups, (ii) html images, (iii) code it
- Break big ideas goals into chunks (6-10 hour chunks)
- Celebrate when you’ve finished the chunk (a chunk could be a simple feature, updating a page, rewriting text)
- Design the interface/look before you program
- Start with core modules and build on that
- Functional specs and documents are fantasies
- Don’t use “lorem ipsum” text. Use real text. This isn’t a joke–it aint chuck-e-cheese
- Give your product personality (smooth, friendly, stern, rigid, subborn, mad, angry, funny, playful)
- Make sure your employees have the right mantra
