Strides Interactive

Make something for someone rather than nothing for everyoneFiled Under: Weekly Tuesday Dose of goodness

I’ve gotten this quote from a very nice guy I’ve met at Open Jive Singapore 2009. He’s a senior manager and is also one of the judges in the competition.

As a judge myself in this competition, we went through 27 projects and I had gain tremendously from their insights and experience.

One of the most memorable things I heard was the very title of this article. Mr Naveen, thanks for giving me  this quote.

So why is this quote memorable and meaningful? Read on….

Let’s analyze this statement in parts.

“Make something for someone”

What does it mean?

1. Make something
   1. Do it! Don’t just talk!
   2. Make sure it’s a project and not something that is endless in production
   3. Make sure you start and finish the project
   4. Make sure that it’s even usable
2. For someone
   1. Have a focus, have a target audience
   2. Know your requirements, know your audience’s needs
   3. Define your problem and define a solution for this problem
   4. Enclose your problem so that it doesn’t become too big for you

Basically, having a clear set of requirements with a well laid out task list and plan is essential to any undertakings.

“Nothing for everyone”

What does it mean?

1. Nothing
   1. It’s not that nothing is being done
   2. It’s that something is already done halfway or all the way but it’s useless
   3. You have something that nobody can use or know how to use
   4. You have something that nobody can apply or create worth and value to self
2. For everyone
   1. Your target audience is too wide, too undefined, too unfocused
   2. Your problem is too big to solve
   3. You end up bits and pieces for everyone but has nothing solid enough for someone to use

Don’t try to swallow what you can’t even chew or wear a hat that is too big for you. It’ll only make life hellish for you. In the end, you achieve nothing, your product pleases no one. This, would have known as a product failure.

So what does it mean when you put them together?

I’ll summarize:

1. Define your problem
2. Identify your target audience
3. Come up with a solution for your problem
4. Encase the scope of your problem, discipline yourself to keep the scope as it is
5. Define use cases based on your problems
6. Define your tasks based on user requirements
7. Break down your tasks into smaller achievable assignments
8. Define a milestone for several tasks
9. Develop and Test at the same time, do not discard your use case and translated test cases
10. Finish project (alpha, beta, release)

These steps are abstract steps; they may or may not apply to different types of projects. But they all point to one thing - do something worthwhile, useful and can benefit your target audience!

This is one of the reasons why I said that people who keep telling me to use 3rd party libraries without understanding my situation, is likely not to know what they themselves are doing.

Signing off,

Jeremy