Pivoting a Project

Episode 31

Pivoting a project can be a blessing, or a curse. It's important to know when and when not to pivot to avoid derailing your development cycle.

Segment 1 - Our Pivots

When first starting out it’s important to be open to all avenues to you
- In our case we chose to try to get into the IT and Web Design/Development business from the get go.
- Although we did have a few IT clients we both seemed to prefer the web development side of the business as time went on.
- Eventually we landed a larger Web development account and at the same time had an opportunity to take on a medium size IT contract for a medical clinic.
- This was when we had to decide to go fully into web development or try to keep up both sides. It seemed like if we tried to keep both sides our preferable side would suffer so we chose to Pivot fully into web development
Recently we decided on another Pivot
- Our choices were continuing trying to expand our service industry and get more clients for a steadier income or try to build a audience and get more in touch with the developer community in an attempt to eventually generate a more ‘passive’ income source
- Of course if you’re listening to this podcast you know the route we chose, as HTML all the Things is our way of connecting with all of you
- This wasn’t an easy decision as the temptation of more stable income was high. I was engaged at the time (married now) and obviously with that was a little worried to dump a bunch of potential income for a chance at building a community
When we didn’t pivot
- Situations will constantly arise in your life, especially if you are trying to make your own path, that will tempt you to Pivot what you are doing
- Sometimes you will pivot, and sometimes it’s better to stick to your guns and forge ahead
- An example a time a we didn’t pivot was when we were coming up with project ideas and after launching our first html5 based game (Click to Riches) we wanted to create more games and almost become a html5 based gaming studio. This sounded really fun and we had a blast making Clicks to Riches but looking at it analytically the competition was extremely high and to generate any sort of consistent profit would have potentially taken years.

Segment 2 - Pivoting a Project

Generally when you’re first coming up with a project, you’ll list all the ideas, features, and systems that will be included either at release, or down the road
These features should be categorized into various groups, some of the common ones are:
- MVP - all the vital features that are needed to make the project function/solve the problem it’s out to solve
- First Updates - Some features that are close-to-vital or easy to implement and will be added to the project soon after release
- Wishlist - Features that would be “cool” to have in the project, but aren’t vital to it’s core functionality
Pivoting a project is not a decision to be taken lightly
Whenever you pivot a project’s direction, it almost always adds a bunch more work to the original plan, typically some of those wishlist features are bubbled up to the MVP, or first updates category
Pivoting at any stage of a project can have some terrible results:
- At the beginning - You might end u
  
  Published on 6 years, 9 months ago

Podcast Episode Details

Pivoting a Project