How exciting it is! Yesterday, I just post an entry about the book "Coder to developer". This noon, I began to read it. Although I had read only few pages, I had to say that it was heuristic for my mind. When I read the pure English words with some help of KingSoft Ciba, I figured out one viewpoint of the author: there were so many Computer Science department could not actually teach you software development skill, like teamwork. All the students should learn the related skills by themselves. Yeah. To, my own experience, I had not been really taught any software development skills. All the things I should learn by myself. And currently, I am still a beginning learner of software development. In the developing process of LTP, I should keep learning everyday. How to develop good software not only writing good code? You can take part into some practical project in some software corporation. But to the little experienced students, one good book about it is also good. So now, I believed the book "Coder to developer" was such one.
To software development, as we know the first step is requirement analysis, namely features including. In chapter one: planning your project, the first section is "Nailing Down a Feature Set". I think it is visualized for requirement analysis. And then how to nail down the feature set? There is an advanced and simple technique: The Elevator Pitch. Yeah, maybe you are confused by the new concept. So what is "The Elevator Pitch"?
Suppose you were finding some venture capital for your new and wonderful software idea, and you had prepared enough with a 15 minute presentation about it, you were coming into a big building to ask help of a senior partner. And as usual, he was so busy that he could only talk with you in the 30-second elevator ride. So what should you say to the VC now? You should use very few words to express your new idea. And whether the words can attract the listener's attention is crucial to your software. For example, the author showed us a paragraph about his software Download Tracker, as following:
Download Tracker builds a personal catalog of all the software that you download from the Internet. You can add descriptions and keywords to identify each software package. Later on you can edit this information and add your own ratings. With Download Tracker, you’ll never forget where you saved a program again, or lose track of the name of the file that installs your favorite freeware application. If you run a website, you can even use Download Tracker to automatically generate a list of your favorite downloads, complete with hyperlinks.
The main points about how to use words are:
Short is better than long. A long and rambling elevator pitch probably means you haven’t really decided what you’re building yet.
Functionality trumps technology. Potential customers care about what your software will do. They usually don’t care how your software does it.
Solve a problem. If you can’t explain what problem your application will solve, customers won’t know why they should buy it.
Pitch the benefits, not yourself. Customers won’t be buying you, your superior knowledge, or your development team (if you’re lucky enough to be working with a team). They’ll be buying the software.
Figure out what’s important to your audience, and make sure you address that. Are the people buying your product most interested in cost, innovation, features, compatibility, or something else entirely?
Yeah! In my mind, I believed that the Elevator Pitch was just like the summarization of research papers. You should use fewest words to attract the attention of the readers.
There was another point about the feature set: Feature creep—the continuing addition of new functionality while you’re still writing the code—is one of the biggest enemies that keep you from actually finishing a project.
Now, to my project of LTP, I felt little like feature creeping now. So the most important thing was to nail down the feature set of LTP, then I could do the right things.
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