Is old news the new “new news”? Cuil has been live for a couple of weeks, it’s not going too well but…maybe old ideas get recycled, maybe old ideas (from monoliths) are indeed truly ground-breaking? Not sure yet but our friends at Avenue A/Razorfish have punted an old (4 yrs to be pedantic) idea as a new idea. What do you think? IBM WebFountain
Worth a second look? Or a dead horse that is past flogging?
I read a great comment on the foot of Getting Real: “Done!” (by 37signals) about the value of execution. So good I thought I would re-iterate it here:-
It’s so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. (People who want me to sign an nda to tell me the simplest idea.)
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.
Explanation:
To make a business, you need to multiply the two.
The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20. The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000.
That’s why I don’t want to hear people’s ideas. I’m not interested until I see their execution.
I think neatly sums up where we are with VITES™ with some clients. We just need to get it executed, working, installed and not worry too much about getting the idea fully-formed and fleshed out. Clients like to try to drag us down a “what are we going to get” route when in reality they should be asking when and how is it going to be delivered. So much of the clients thinking is focussed round creating something that has a “finished, delivered” flavour to it when the winning approach is to get something, anything, delivered and then refine it later.
I think we all realise that software systems are getting more and more complex as time goes on. Microsoft (Vista), Adobe (PDF Reader, Photoshop) et al are all building more and more features into their applications. is this good? Well, the folks at 37signals seem to think this is wrong.
I’m inclined to agree with them and as we are avid users and evangelists of their Basecamp project collaboration tool we might just see if we can speed up our own software development using some of these tricks.
An internal post on our extranet got me thinking about the argument that quality is a function of quantity. In the post (Coding Horror: Quantity Always Trumps Quality ) the idea was that better quality is the outcome if you iteratively do things over and over again - is this not just an application of Trial & Error Economics? The argument also holds true only if the creator learns from the early mistake and this means that there has be be intermediate measurement (or review) of the progress so far and also assumes that there is either a) a target to achieve or b) a reference point (teacher?) that can judge progress.
The theory of a million monkeys with a million typewriters does hold true but that evolutionary approach seems to lack learning outside of the project being worked on. Experience can be brought to bear to speed-up the process.
