Embrace Open Source
Open Source Software might be just the thing to get those creative juices flowing when you have a creative itch to scratch. Conventional wisdom will tell you that web product development needs to follow specific steps; industry standard prescribed phases and deliverables may prove valuable, but also can impede creativity. The cost of starting without pre-developed tools can switch focus to building the tools and not the product. The product manager may then elect to work in the abstract and put ideas on paper in a technical vacuum before making choices on platform or functionality. Buying a technology platform before you know what you need is expensive, but open source platforms might just be the thing that frees the web product mind from cost and constraints get the ideas on the screen as quickly.
When developing web products that require the construction of new code, one of the first steps should be to research what open source tools are available to use in real-time before you go further.
Most of the time, product managers are tasked with building on existing products or technology. They are asked to repackage readily available functionality or products to take to a new vertical or market segment (or to address new pricing goals). This scenario enables the product development team to engage in any variety of conventional approaches. This typically works pretty well, so I will not go further into that scenario, but when something new is conceived, there is always a painful conflict between the longer term goals of the product manager and the developers. “How do we build it if we don’t understand what you want”? And in response, “How do I tell you what I want if I don’t know what is possible”? This conflict takes many forms, but it’s the infamous chicken and egg problem of web product development that vexes us all. All kinds of processes have been dreamt up to address this age old issue; books have been written and a cottage industry of seminars and training programs have financially benefited from this conflict. But there is a better way: open source technology.
I must admit, that no matter how busy I am with work, I still find time to dream up new web product concepts. Sometimes I am lucky enough to be able to put these ideas to work in context of my employment, but other times they end up on my running list of ideas that I plan to get to later. Recently, I decided not to put an idea I have to work. But, I went about things all-wrong. I have long been a web product executive and I assigned myself the role of product manager to get my idea rolling. What I recently realized is that I created the chicken and egg paradox myself; the age-old web product development conflict became a monologue and a barrier within my own thinking. I spent weeks composing a business plan, high-level requirements and screen comps. All of a sudden, cost, time and resources hit a wall with me. I was caught in the Project Bermuda Triangle and I was stuck.
I had exhausted all creative ideation I had and now I was repeating cycles and making no progress. “How can I build this if I don’t know what is possible? Who can I get to help me build this thing? How can I afford it”?
Sound familiar? This is an identical outcome to countless projects you and I have encountered in corporate life, isn’t it? You see–the issue is not that the original idea wasn’t good; it is that I started out with an open book of infinite options and scoped myself down as the process of abstraction weaved itself into the core of my idea. Now, imagine this scenario playing out in a corporate environment.
Open source tools might provide the catalyst to overcome this indoctrination and limitation of possibilities. I recently grew impatient with myself and opted to look into what “free” platforms were available to help me get out of my self created box. I threw out the idea that I needed to write it down and opted to try things out. Low and behold, I found a 90% match for what I needed, elgg. While I don’t plan to build a social network, elgg gave me a vanilla LAMP framework to start coding, playing and simply experiment to unbind my mind. The progress I made in a week outpaced the past progress of writing things down in the abstract and allowed me the actual experience to write down the meaningful concepts. The results so far are a shorter document, cost savings and brand new ideas for application features.
Skeptics of open source software are out there. Companies like supported software with a warranty, but many times the open source community is faster in responding to bugs and issues than the commercial vendors and the support community is more empathetic to your specific experiences and that community tends to be much more proactive in creating solutions to bugs and limitations than a company that is on a ridged annual/biannual release cycle. Also remember the capitol expenditure is close to zero (a big plus).
~DK
