Getting Real - der "Weg" der 37 Signals

  • English title (might be): Getting Real - 37 Signals' "way"
  • Language: German
  • Speaker: Frank Westphal

Extreme programmer Frank Westphal talked about his work with the 37Signals and their "way" of work.

  • The gorgeous Signals' book "Getting Real" is available for free online. Cool! :-)
  • Development should be done in a iterative way: launch quickly and listen to the users' feedback.
  • Small companies can not keep up with the arms race of bigger companies which fight each other with features. Those companies can only build less (to save time and money) but concentrate on the essentials.
  • Build the interface first and work with an HTML prototype – not with a Photoshop file.
  • A project has four main factors: time, complexity, quality and budget. Launch when time or budget is gone to keep your quality.
  • Let the users solve their problems in their own way, no not force them.
  • Scaling will be a problem at last (if at all). Frank did not mention it, but in the future scaling problem can be solves using a cloud hosting platform like Google App Engine or Amazon S3.
  • »Specifications are wish lists created at the completely wrong time.« — I never liked a sentence so much. :-)
  • Implement small but difficult details later.
  • Admit mistakes or failures to the public to create confidence.

I totally enjoyed this session! It must be wonderful to work in this lightweight, iterative way on projects.