"You Shall Not Pass!" But Seriously, Answer These Q's First
I’ve put together a little bit of a checklist for you. Comprised of 10 great questions that are pretty essential to your apps success.
More importantly, these questions need to be sussed out before you begin.
This is preliminary stuff. The stuff you don’t want to do, but it’s the stuff that matters.
Let’s just get into it…
10 Essential Questions To Ask Before You Begin Your App
1. What is the project?
If you can’t write it down in a few sentences you don’t have anything. You need a description so you and your people know what this is all about. Not: “it’s kind of like… and with a little bit of…” Nail it.
2. When does it ship?
Pick a date and time. This is a killer. Every project I used to do was late to ship. The best weapon to battle this is to decide a launch date in advance, and come hell or high water you ship. Make sure everyone who’s involved knows this date. That’ll ensure they’re sh*t scared to be the one not to pull their weight in time.
3. Who’s ultimately responsible for this shipping on time?
I recommend you. Grab this bull by the horns and make sure everything gets done on time. Someone has to take responsibility or you’ll be late.
4. What are you afraid of?
Be honest with yourself. It is very difficult to create and launch a project because we fear a lot of pretty inane sh*t. But we feel it anyways and it can hurt the project. Think about this. And then think about this some more.
I wonder if those things you are afraid of are where you should spend more time and energy (wink wink)?
5. Why should anyone care about your project?
This is just another way of asking, what makes your stuff remarkable? In the 4 Step Guide to Making Apps eBook, I outline a bunch of edges (ways) that can instantly make your app something to talk about, something people would really care about.
What do you have? What makes it special and note-worthy?
6. Who is your user?
Think about this now. Who is your customer? If you don’t define them you will get lost trying to please everyone, and that’s a sure-fire way to blend in. Remember that there are boat-load of apps out there and you have to make something special for a small and targeted audience. Only then will you have the chance for it to bridge the chasm and hit the rest.
7. Who are the influencers to this demographic?
Who holds authority, respect, and credibility in your small arena your making an app for? You can’t market like Nike and buy celebrities. What you can do, though, is connect with the influencers who hold power in your niche and try to work with them.
8. Who’s help do you need?
List everyone, internal and external, that you need to embrace this project for it to work. Get them on board, and get them pumped.
9. What’s perfect, and what’s good enough?
Let’s face it, you will not be able to ship a 100% perfect and completed project if you have a deadline. The deadline is more important. Don’t postpone the launch to change features, add features, wait for stuff that isn’t essential, etc.
Write down what perfect looks like.
Write down what good enough looks like.
As long as you don’t compromise what makes your app remarkable, then you need to ship with good enough. You can update all you want afterwards, and all the while if you’re connecting with your users (which I hope you are), then you can fine-tune it towards them (again, as long as that doesn’t compromise your edge!).
10. What can be added or taken away?
This is your last minute sifting session. You have the layout of everything just mentioned. You can see the entire project right in front of you (written down, right?).
Now list 10 things that, if added, can drastically make your app more remarkable.
And list 10 things that, if taken out, can drastically improve the UI (user interface/experience) of the app.
After this, don’t change a thing until you ship! You will be very tempted the whole way through to add, subtract, change or alter. Don’t. This is your last chance so do it right.
What are some other pre-development questions we need to answer so we end up creating something great and shipping it on time?
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