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This is the typical case where starting small and simple helps you 1) save significant amount of time ahead 2) give your customer time to identify what they r

This is the typical case where starting small and simple helps you 1) save significant amount of time ahead 2) give your customer time to identify what they really want 3) help you iterate quickly on newer versions. If something doesn't work, it's easy to throw stuff away

Gibbon1 7y ago
All good advice. Old army observation. No Battle Plan Survives First Contact With The Enemy. Thus the sooner you get that over with the better.
- markdown 7y ago
  > No Battle Plan Survives First Contact With The Enemy Mike Tyson said it better: https://i.imgur.com/Gy9TWiq.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Gy9TWiq.jpg
- shezi 7y ago
  As far as I recall, that's actually a quote: „Kein Plan überlebt die erste Feindberührung.„ by General Moltke. Your translation is exact. Just wanted to add a source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmuth_von_Moltke_the_Elder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmuth_von_Moltke_the_Elder
  - yesbabyyes 7y ago
    It's also said, about Moltke the Elder, that he only ever laughed twice in his life. The first time was when his mother-in-law passed away, the other time, when he saw Sweden's Vaxholm fortress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaxholm_Fortress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaxholm_Fortress
jmartinpetersen 7y ago
It's absolutely true, and while he could have made a mockup showing how it would look for someone with a zip code in eg. Dallas, getting through the bureaucratic hoops to actually get feed back from those who eventually shot it down ... that's just really hard, most places. "We can't show this to customers/users/management, it's not completely done!" It's a process problem and you can't solve it bottom-up. You either get used to it and work to the specs, knowing they will change a lot, or you try to get closer to whoever makes the decisions. More often than not, that leads you to another company working on a different problem ...

Gibbon1 7y ago

All good advice. Old army observation. No Battle Plan Survives First Contact With The Enemy. Thus the sooner you get that over with the better.

markdown 7y ago
> No Battle Plan Survives First Contact With The Enemy Mike Tyson said it better: https://i.imgur.com/Gy9TWiq.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Gy9TWiq.jpg
shezi 7y ago
As far as I recall, that's actually a quote: „Kein Plan überlebt die erste Feindberührung.„ by General Moltke. Your translation is exact. Just wanted to add a source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmuth_von_Moltke_the_Elder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmuth_von_Moltke_the_Elder
- yesbabyyes 7y ago
  It's also said, about Moltke the Elder, that he only ever laughed twice in his life. The first time was when his mother-in-law passed away, the other time, when he saw Sweden's Vaxholm fortress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaxholm_Fortress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaxholm_Fortress

jmartinpetersen 7y ago

It's absolutely true, and while he could have made a mockup showing how it would look for someone with a zip code in eg. Dallas, getting through the bureaucratic hoops to actually get feed back from those who eventually shot it down ... that's just really hard, most places. "We can't show this to customers/users/management, it's not completely done!" It's a process problem and you can't solve it bottom-up. You either get used to it and work to the specs, knowing they will change a lot, or you try to get closer to whoever makes the decisions. More often than not, that leads you to another company working on a different problem ...