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Planned 72-84 hour dev weeks? I don't want to throw stones here because everyone has ended up in an impossible situation at some point, but I'd still prefer to

by trotsky 16y ago

Planned 72-84 hour dev weeks? I don't want to throw stones here because everyone has ended up in an impossible situation at some point, but I'd still prefer to hear some owning up to it being a management failure. If for no other reason than to not give the impression to up and coming CEO/CTO/Dev Managers that crunching to that degree is a normal part of software development. Not a dis, just an observation.

justin 16y ago
You are right; the timeline we were up against was extremely tight because of external deadlines. Crunching to this degree runs an extremely high risk of burn out and is not normal, and I don't believe it is something that should be done unless you are in a do or die situation. I do think it was a management failure that we didn't plan / project manage better, but we're still relatively new to mobile app development. If we'd had perfect knowledge of what we were going to build in the beginning, we could have cut a lot of time off customer development / exploratory phase of the product development, but I've never realistically heard of that before for a new product.
- trotsky 16y ago
  Understood, I appreciate the fact that you were up against sxsw and that scheduling is hard, especially when you're not that familiar with the platform. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
- GavinB 16y ago
  What made launching at SXSW a "do or die" situation? Sure, it's free publicity, but is that worth burnout and product that was rushed out the door? I wish you guys all the best, but I wonder if you'll look back at this in a year and think that maybe you should have just taken another month or two to build 1.0.
  - Terry_B 16y ago
    I'm guessing that it's the famous kickstart it gave to Twitter that has started this trend.
  - symptic 16y ago
    Pride. Sounds to me like everyone knew what they were signing up for and fighting to make the accomplishment goes a long way in building the group.
abstractbill 16y ago
I agree to some extent, if you're not aggressively trying to capture an emerging market. But the SocialCam team is, and I think they have exactly the right sense of urgency.
- trotsky 16y ago
  I assure you that people capture competitive emerging markets without crunching that much. It almost sounds like you're baking in 12x30 finishes into your planning process. Even EA et al. have the decency to pretend their crunch abuse is unintentional.
edge17 16y ago
I dunno, i've always found in any launch i've participated in, crunch time is crunch time. There's also something to be said about working on awesome teams. If you've ever been fortunate enough to experience it, awesome teams make you want to be there in the trenches and not at home sleeping. I'm sure this changes as life's priorities change, but to anyone that's ever been there you'll understand what I mean.
Zev 16y ago
It wasn't planned. When we initially sat down to plan the schedule out two months ago, I thought there was enough time to get the iPhone app done. Without that intense of a workload. And then some bugs more serious than I (or any of us) had predicted happened. FWIW, pretty much the entire time we were in the office working, so was Justin -- asking what he could do to help, if there was anything to test, that needed doing to free up some time, etc. Working that much kind of sucks. But, there are much worse ways to work that hard than with a bunch of smart people who are working just as hard as you are. </one of the people who built the iPhone version of Socialcam>
- edge17 16y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule "The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time."[1] —Tom Cargill, Bell Labs
- khafra 16y ago
  For future reference, don't plan your schedule by looking at the tasks you need to complete and thinking about how long each will take you. Plan your schedule by looking at how long similar projects have taken similar teams. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_class_forecasting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_class_forecasting
  - emmett 16y ago
    But we've never done a similar project before. We're pretty good at estimating how long it takes to build websites now, because we've done it so many times before. We're not good at estimating ground-up builds of entirely new mobile products, because we've never done that before. We were guilty of being overly optimistic for sure. When you're doing something new, you just have to be really really pessimistic.

by trotsky 16y ago

justin 16y ago

You are right; the timeline we were up against was extremely tight because of external deadlines. Crunching to this degree runs an extremely high risk of burn out and is not normal, and I don't believe it is something that should be done unless you are in a do or die situation. I do think it was a management failure that we didn't plan / project manage better, but we're still relatively new to mobile app development. If we'd had perfect knowledge of what we were going to build in the beginning, we could have cut a lot of time off customer development / exploratory phase of the product development, but I've never realistically heard of that before for a new product.

trotsky 16y ago
Understood, I appreciate the fact that you were up against sxsw and that scheduling is hard, especially when you're not that familiar with the platform. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
GavinB 16y ago
What made launching at SXSW a "do or die" situation? Sure, it's free publicity, but is that worth burnout and product that was rushed out the door? I wish you guys all the best, but I wonder if you'll look back at this in a year and think that maybe you should have just taken another month or two to build 1.0.
- Terry_B 16y ago
  I'm guessing that it's the famous kickstart it gave to Twitter that has started this trend.
- symptic 16y ago
  Pride. Sounds to me like everyone knew what they were signing up for and fighting to make the accomplishment goes a long way in building the group.

abstractbill 16y ago

I agree to some extent, if you're not aggressively trying to capture an emerging market. But the SocialCam team is, and I think they have exactly the right sense of urgency.

trotsky 16y ago
I assure you that people capture competitive emerging markets without crunching that much. It almost sounds like you're baking in 12x30 finishes into your planning process. Even EA et al. have the decency to pretend their crunch abuse is unintentional.

edge17 16y ago

I dunno, i've always found in any launch i've participated in, crunch time is crunch time. There's also something to be said about working on awesome teams. If you've ever been fortunate enough to experience it, awesome teams make you want to be there in the trenches and not at home sleeping. I'm sure this changes as life's priorities change, but to anyone that's ever been there you'll understand what I mean.

Zev 16y ago

It wasn't planned. When we initially sat down to plan the schedule out two months ago, I thought there was enough time to get the iPhone app done. Without that intense of a workload. And then some bugs more serious than I (or any of us) had predicted happened. FWIW, pretty much the entire time we were in the office working, so was Justin -- asking what he could do to help, if there was anything to test, that needed doing to free up some time, etc. Working that much kind of sucks. But, there are much worse ways to work that hard than with a bunch of smart people who are working just as hard as you are. </one of the people who built the iPhone version of Socialcam>

edge17 16y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule "The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time."[1] —Tom Cargill, Bell Labs
khafra 16y ago
For future reference, don't plan your schedule by looking at the tasks you need to complete and thinking about how long each will take you. Plan your schedule by looking at how long similar projects have taken similar teams. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_class_forecasting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_class_forecasting
- emmett 16y ago
  But we've never done a similar project before. We're pretty good at estimating how long it takes to build websites now, because we've done it so many times before. We're not good at estimating ground-up builds of entirely new mobile products, because we've never done that before. We were guilty of being overly optimistic for sure. When you're doing something new, you just have to be really really pessimistic.