iPhone Here We Come

We have been looking at the various possibilities for shrink-wrapped software development and have decided that iPhone development is where it's at. We've come up with a list of more than 50 app ideas. Where to start?

Paradigm Shift

After some deliberation, I've decided to take the business in a different direction. Custom development work has been good to me and for the time being that's what I will be doing. But I'm going to start spending more time on shrink-wrapped software.There are lots of reasons for this:

• I started programming in 1993 with QuickBasic and some desktop software for testing audio devices. This represents a return, of sorts, to my roots. Or whatever.
• The custom development business has become very competitive, especially with cheap, foreign labor. So much so that I've stopped bidding using sites like guru.com and elance.com.
• Shrink-wrapped software is no less competitive but offers advantages that custom development can't touch. For example, build once and sell many times represents more work up front but potentially more revenue for less work in the long term.

I am totally pumped about this change and am looking forward to building my first applications.

Planning Big Without Big Plans

I was cleaning up and archiving my files today and stumbled on to some old documentation. The file was a plain text file, 8KB in size, 454 words that I had written many years earlier.

There were just a few headings, notes and bullet points that included things like statistics for products and orders and ideas for new directions for the business in which I worked.

Even so, this tiny little document (which accompanied me into many meetings) was the beginning of major change in the technology department that was my responsibility and eventually led to profitability and accolades.

The plan was really big, but there was not a lot of research and planning -- just enough to write up a small explanation was all that was needed to start and guide the process.

So many companies both large and small create volumes of documentation and accomplish less than we did. Many projects still commence (and end) with a "big bang" in which every last detail is explored and exhausted before any work has started.

If you are building software for operating life support, then by all means, document until the cows come home. But most other projects and businesses could benefit from creating simple succinct documents that establish achievable goals.

• The detail missing from the document will come naturally.
• Such a document and the direction it provides is quickly and easily changed as more becomes known about your strategic position and operational constraints.
• The compact nature of the plan makes it possible for everyone involved to grasp and own the goals.

It IS possible to plan big without creating complex documentation if you get over "how it's done" and have a talent for organization on the fly. Give it a try, it might just surprise you.