- One of the biggest benefits of following
an iterative development approach is reduced time to market.
Often, people misunderstand that to mean
that iterative development builds the same amount of code
in less time.
That's not necessarily true.
What it does is build the most important bits of code,
the ones that deliver the most business benefit, earlier.
That code with just the most important pieces in
gets released earlier than if you'd wait until every part
of the product was built.
The team then fills in the spaces around that core product
in subsequent iterations.
So the time it takes you to put something out
in front of customers is reduced with iterative development.
But what is that something?
Well, this is one of the lovely benefits of design thinking.
Because you've been listening to real customers,
and because you've already tested your prototype ideas
before you start building a real product,
you can get a really good idea of which areas of the product
are likely to give you the most business benefit.
And you don't have to wait until you ship the product
to see if you were right.
You can conduct ongoing usability tests
and even start pilot user groups to measure how successful
the product is likely to be while it's still in development.
This early feedback helps you work out
whether you're on track
and lets you see what type of course corrections
you might need to perform.
Even after you've shipped the minimum usable product
with a core business benefit,
you can continue gathering metrics
and performing user research to work out which other parts
of the product are worth building and in what order.
Rather than creating everything and then finding out
it was only a tiny part of it that was worthwhile,
You get to pick and choose the pieces
that will really add value for your customers
and your business.
This is all music to executives ears.
They get to reduce the risk of the project
while it's still in development.
They can be more confident that it will deliver business
benefit when it's released.
The time to release is much shorter
than using traditional techniques.
And then the overall project duration can often be cut
because some of the less important features
that customers wouldn't use just don't end up getting built.
This is also great for staff morale.
If you've ever been on a project that was canceled
before it was released,
or worse still one that failed after release,
you know just how bad that feels.
This way, you know much earlier
whether the ideas that you want to implement
are likely to work for customers
and to provide business benefit.
So you can change direction or cancel the project
with a lot less investment.
And because you're working in a user-centered way,
it's much less likely that you'll have to cancel it
and much more likely it will be successful when it launches.