As a guy working for a big software company which provides a lot of features for their customers and used to add additional coding for each release i have been thinking for years that the best product was the one with the higher number of features . And i assume that idea is still regarded as belonging to the conventional wisdom.
So in order to overcome competition the companies spend more and more time and money to build big products with many options.
However, i think now that such behavior leads to a dead-end by increasing dramatically both the software price and their implementation complexity. I changed my mind reading the online book "Getting real" from a small company called 37signals and whose team creates simple and focused software. Their philosophy is to build product that do less than the others but that work smarter, allow their customer doing their way and are easier to use.
For 37signal's book less coding is more means :
"Less features
Less options
Less corporate structure
Less meeting and abstractions
Less promises"
Less coding is more because it allows you to be more flexible for quickly changes : you can react and evolve, you can focus on the good ideas and drop the bad ones. You can listen and respond to your customer. You can integrate new technologies now instead of later.
Less coding enables the companies to lower their cost of change. Less coding allows companies to rapidly modify their entire business model: they can change their product, their marketing issues, they can change their priorities and focus, they can make mistakes and fix them. And above all "they can change their minds."
This video with Barry Schwartz, the paradoxe of choice's author is not directly about software but you will find anyway some ideas that are fully applicable to it
So in order to overcome competition the companies spend more and more time and money to build big products with many options.
However, i think now that such behavior leads to a dead-end by increasing dramatically both the software price and their implementation complexity. I changed my mind reading the online book "Getting real" from a small company called 37signals and whose team creates simple and focused software. Their philosophy is to build product that do less than the others but that work smarter, allow their customer doing their way and are easier to use.
For 37signal's book less coding is more means :
"Less features
Less options
Less corporate structure
Less meeting and abstractions
Less promises"
Less coding is more because it allows you to be more flexible for quickly changes : you can react and evolve, you can focus on the good ideas and drop the bad ones. You can listen and respond to your customer. You can integrate new technologies now instead of later.
Less coding enables the companies to lower their cost of change. Less coding allows companies to rapidly modify their entire business model: they can change their product, their marketing issues, they can change their priorities and focus, they can make mistakes and fix them. And above all "they can change their minds."
This video with Barry Schwartz, the paradoxe of choice's author is not directly about software but you will find anyway some ideas that are fully applicable to it
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