Over the course of my web development career, I’ve had the opportunity to work in many environments from major corporations to small businesses. What I have learned over the years, is that developing websites based on a list of features doesn’t work.
There are a few problems with developing based on a list of features:
- Features creep in when releases slip off schedule.
- Features usually come from site stakeholders and not users.
- The site becomes unmanageable.
The problem with developing based on a list of features for a particular release, is that eventually a release gets off schedule. Depending on how far the release slips off schedule, features for the next release may creep in due to business needs. I’ve seen a two week release schedule slip for six months, all the while more and more features are getting added. How would that ever work?
Which features get added are usually based on business priorities and not user priorities. I don’t know how many times I heard the phrase, “we need feature x, because our competition has feature x.” Little thought was given to why the competition has feature x and whether it would be something that would benefit their users.
Features tend to get added but never removed. This causes the site to loose it’s cohesiveness. What once was a manageable site, has now ballooned into a mess of features. Which usually leads to someone saying, “the site is unmanageable, and we need a complete rewrite.”
A website should have the user’s primary goal in mind, when new features are being considered. New features should only be approved if they help the user complete their goal.
A good read on this subject is Getting Real by 37signals.