Published on:<\/strong> 01.05.2019<\/p>\n

Let me start with a personal true story<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In 2014 I was working on a personal project of making IOS card game<\/strong> called Tablic<\/a>, I spend more than 200 work hours on did 80% of the original plan and never finished it.<\/p>\n

Do you know why?<\/p>\n

Because of software scope creep<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Originally I had the idea to make a game with one player vs. computer<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

As I was near completing that goal I started adding additional features<\/strong>: I could add 4 players, a user could select AI difficulty.<\/p>\n

Each additional features meant more development time: new code and changes to an existing one<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

And after all this, I decided to add multiplayer support over local WiFi and over the internet.<\/p>\n

This last decision has truly killed the project<\/strong> completely.<\/p>\n

In order to implement multiplayer, I had to write a lot of additional code and to change existing architecture, it was at least an additional 300 hours<\/strong> and after more than 200 hours already spend I decided to take a small break (like a week) but later never continued.<\/p>\n

The reason why I did not want to release it without multiplayer was that I was thinking it is not good enough, other games had multiplayer, how can I make one without it<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I was always thinking that I will continue and finish it one day<\/strong>, but that day never came, today I am thinking that it is probably better to rewrite it to Unity than to continue in Objective-C (but that is a discussion for another time).<\/p>\n

Years later when I was analyzing why I never finished that IOS game, I came to the conclusion that the original problem was because I did not have a specification of the first version<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

By specification, I just mean a list of feature, with dependencies between them, basic UI scatch and time estimates.<\/p>\n

As I was completing some features I continue adding new ones indefinitely<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I am pretty sure if I did implement multiplayer I would add some other features also.<\/p>\n

Today I am wiser or I just think so<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Now I have a process for writing software.<\/p>\n

Before I write code I decide what is MVP that I will make, without even thinking about additional features<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The reason why I do not even want to write addition features is that I have learned<\/strong> that even when I make software for myself, software what I make is not software that I need<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Define what kind of minimal features you need to have in your software<\/strong>, make dependencies between them and time estimates how long it will take to make them.<\/p>\n

I do time estimates in pomodoros<\/strong> (25 minutes increments) but other time units can be used.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Define what kind of minimal features you need to have in your software.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[27],"tags":[41,55,56],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n