A List of Reasons Why Cheezburger has Greater Success Through Incrementalism
At Cheezburger, we embrace incrementalism. We’ve found that when we make changes in incremental, small pieces and there are several benefits:
- Things get done and ship faster. The result is regular progress and momentum. Success begets success.
- Things tend to be less late. It’s hard to have a 2 day project be 2 months late.
- You get the thing your making out to your customers faster. As a result, a) you start learning if it works sooner, b) your customers get to start using it sooner, and c) assuming it’s valuable, you start capturing the value sooner.
- There is less overhead (design, planning, etc.) in a 2 day project than a 2 month project.
- Incremental changes have fewer dependencies. Dependencies add complexity and can cause delays.
- Developers like small projects because they seem easier and more fun.
- A small project has less bugs and is easier to test.
- It’s easier to A/B test incremental changes.
- It’s less expensive to change your mind because changes cost less.
- Incremental changes are less jarring to customers.
The bottom line is that we’ve found greater success through incrementalism. I’m sure there are 101 other reasons that I’ve missed too (and I’d love for you to share them in the comments…yes, I’m speaking to you Martin).
[...] comments Following up on my previous post about incrementalism, I would like to share this with you: we are trying to kill the word “redesign” at [...]
Please Stop Saying “Redesign” at Scott Porad
10 Nov 09 at 8:52 am
Yes, incrementalism is great but only works for product that are already on a positive spiral. It doesn’t work if you don’t have a product or if the growth/usage is stagnating/declining.
Marcelo Calbucci
10 Nov 09 at 10:10 am
Marcelo, will you elaborate on that? I don’t see the relationship between the attitude of the business and incrementalism. Seems like all the benefits of incrementalism would be beneficial to a business in decline.
scottporad
10 Nov 09 at 10:18 am