How many times have you had an idea that you just couldn’t find the time to bring to reality? How many great ideas are being discarded, way before they ever get a chance to evolve and become a feature or a product?
I hate giving up on good ideas … which is why I like the concept of proof of concept (POC). Taking your idea, and implementing it quick and dirty, partially, just to see if it works, and to demonstrate the power behind your idea.
In SharedBook we encourage developers to go wild with their ideas. When someone approaches me with an interesting idea, my instant reply is: OK, let’s see a POC. With SharedBook’s open API, we can have those POCs up and running very quickly (most POCs take between 40 minutes to half a day, and generate the WOW effect). POCs also complement our lean development philosophy. Most specifically, the empowering the team aspect of it. What better way is there to empower people, than taking their ideas, and helping them become a reality?
And we use POCs way beyond proving or marketing an idea. Every new feature that is about to be developed starts with a POC. So by the time we get to the design document, we have a pretty good idea of what's ahead.
Why did I decide to write on this today? Because I just received a first glance of another idea that one of our key developers had. When he first came to me with the idea, I was somewhat skeptical, but I kept my skepticism to myself, and gave him the go ahead for the proof of concept. After seeing the result, I must admit, it is one of the coolest applications of our open API!
Stay tuned, pretty soon it will be ready for everyone to see.
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