Hyper Incremental Delivery

Incremental problem solving is an art.

You're at point A, and the whole world can see point B. Getting between the two, and doing so in a way that delivers value along the way, is more challenging.

"How can I deliver the most value with the least effort?" is the question. Every now and then you have a sudden realization that answers that question to an extent you previously though impossible. This page is a place to collect such answers, in the hopes that we can learn HyperIncrementalDelivery from examples.

Web forms - Instead of setting up extensive HTML, form-processing, and database frameworks, up-front, try this one:

1. Create two, static HTML pages. One is the form, and one is a page that is a "Thanks for filling the form out" page.
2. Point the form page at the Thanks page, and use the "GET" form method.
3. Launch.

Presto: You now have a working form and database (your Web logs are now gathering requests that have the entire form listed in the URL). Now, you can figure out what your worst problem is (Is it that the logs aren't human-readable? Is it that the form does no validation?), and solve it. Launch. Repeat.

Data entry - Instead of creating UserInterface widgets, database schemas, etc., just have the data-entry folk get their start by writing into comma-separated text files. You can then watch the way they work, and figure out what you could do that would help them the most while requiring the least effort. After you've got that figured out, and solved, repeat.

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Of course, be mindful of the SimpleStupidVsSimpleElegant dichotomy. IncrementalDelivery is not about seeing how quickly we can paint ourselves into corners.