Go ugly early

From my time spent in product development, there is an approach that has served me well: "Go ugly early."

This concept involves releasing early iterations of your products so you can allow your customers to interact with them and provide feedback. I'm not talking about releasing unstable or buggy products - I'm talking about releasing stable products that have limited functionality, but which telegraph the shapes of things to come. This can be done on a controlled basis (such as with a limited Beta program)

There are many advantages to this approach. For example:

1. You allow your customers to become more involved in the evolution of your product.
2. You provide functionality to the market earlier - this is good for the market and your position in it (assuming you release stable product).
3. You get early feedback on whether there is even a need for what you've built, enabling course corrections earlier when your sunk costs are lower.
4. You discover how your product interacts with other products, processes, etc. in the market.
5. You can often increase your thought leadership and influence in the market.

A similar approach can be used for our personal ideas. If you have an idea, concept, etc. you can often advance the development of that concept by going ugly early and sharing that idea with others for input before you think the idea is "done." Many of the advantages are similar to the ones listed above.

Of course, there are risks in early disclosure. You may give away your secrets and your competitors may gain advantage from what you have released. In business, as with your own ideas, there are multiple ways to address this.

• Plentiful attitude. Assume there are enough ideas, money, opportunity, etc. to go around and share the idea openly. This approach also works for ideas you are contributing for the greater good (open standards, for example).
• Scarcity attitude. Assume that revealing your ideas early will expose you to risk of being out-executed, or having your idea show up in others' works. You can control this to a certain degree by limiting disclosure (to a selected group of early adopters, for example), or by putting a non-disclosure agreement in place. In this case, pick your friends wisely.

And there are many shades between these two. Regardless of the end of the spectrum on which you find yourself, there can be a lot of value and "time to market" benefits of going ugly early. Consider this powerful tool in your toolbox - are you incubating any ideas that could benefit from going ugly early?

Comments

[John Cox]

Another thing to consider would be to not exactly go ugly early, but rather roll out your functionality in steps. Have the feel of a somewhat finished product, but in no way shape or form be complete by the product specs.

You have mentioned possible pitfalls with the idea above in your post, but not mentioned is the lack of legitimacy that you build with a product that is 60 - 70% complete. If you have the polish already on but lack the functionality that you intend, then you are building that legitimacy with your customers.

The same can be said for the personal ideas as well;)

[Dwayne Melancon]

Yes, John - good point. That's why you have to decide whether you do a "Launch" or a "launch" with this - general release or private screening.

If you can establish a group of trusted advisors or an advisory board kind of approach, you can get feedback while preserving your public reputation. This applies to company products or personal ideas.

[Gary Bourgeault]

I like especially what you say about getting your customers involed early and than getting their feedback.

If you do that than I believe that they take ownership and you will get much more honest feedback than you ever could from a focus group.