Similarly, the move from the traditional “waterfall” model of development to “agile” or one of its variants has proven difficult for some teams. Some initially compromised on an approach somewhere between waterfall and agile. The trouble with this idea, however, is that in order to reap the benefits of agile development, you have to go all the way with it. Partly agile is not agile at all.
But with several years of proven success behind it, agile has attracted enough adherents that it is now the de facto standard—it’s unusual to find a development team that doesn’t use some flavor of agile.
At AndPlus, not only have we embraced the agile methodology, we have found ways to make it better (for us, at least). One of our modifications is the concept of the 100-Day MVP cycle, in which a development team designs, builds and tests a minimum viable product (MVP) version of a software solution in—you guessed it—100 days, or 20 weeks (we do give ourselves weekends off).
The first, and most crucial, phase of the 100-Day MVP cycle is the first 10 days. This phase is a variation on Google Ventures’ five-day Design Sprint. (We didn’t steal it from Google, honest. They give it away.)
The goal of days one through 10 is to identify all of the software requirements and come up with a user interface design, complete with wireframes and other design artifacts that the customer reviews and approves. Why do we take 10 days, when Google Ventures takes only five? We found that by giving ourselves extra time, we were better able to understand the customer’s needs and market, and could develop richer, more complete design prototypes that left nothing to the customer’s imagination. The result is a better product that more closely matches the customer’s vision.
Here is what we do in our 10-day design sprint.
At the end of day 10, we have a solid user experience (UX) design that the customer has approved. After the design sprint, we work on the back-end architecture design and start coding.
We find that this methodology maximizes customer satisfaction by providing the customer with a known end state for the MVP and a definite delivery date. It also gives us a well-defined goal that we know we can meet. It’s win-win for all stakeholders.