Intricacies of Zero-to-One Software Projects

A zero-to-one project is also known as a greenfield project. These projects are basically small ideas with almost no tangible work. The inherent complexities of zero-to-one projects are hard and many struggle with it. There are more chances of failures in a zero-to-one project and the reasons can be very hard to detect. 

This article tries to summarize the main reasons why many such projects fail. Many such projects are also called Proof of Concept (POC) or MVP (Minimum Viable Product). Of course, there are some variants of perspective here, but that's not the intent of this article.

Scope Creep

This is a by-product of a lack of clear vision or the stakeholder trying to expect too much from an initial version. This is very similar to a tarball analogy where each small increment leads to a big blob which becomes impossible to manage. Also, too much change in focus results in lost productivity and diminished returns. The MVP should have a clear problem statement that it solves and that should not change very often. There are ways of project management to introduce changes to the projects, but it should be of utmost importance to the stakeholders that the tradeoffs here are higher.

Not Enough Market Research

This happens more frequently and projects in this category are bound to fail from day one. Many times this is a cause of stakeholders being tunnel-visioned and not considering other alternatives. Interviewing users is another strategy to bypass this risk. Even after doing market research and interviewing many users, the extracted information should be reviewed by more than one person. The problem with data is that you can always find some signals, but it takes some experience to detect noise in those signals. Also, if there are established companies who are already working on similar ideas or ideas that solve the same problem differently, it can introduce necessary challenges and might cause a reason to pivot.

Mismatch Between Resources

Every Product Manager gets excited to hire an engineering team and build out the product. Too many times, engineers are hired with whatever skill set they have. For many challenging zero-to-one projects, the use of the proper technological solution is challenging. Hiring a proper technological consultant to lay out the plans and highlight skills to hire can pay off in the future.

Another problem is to invest time if your solutions require using some cloud services. Many cloud tech companies provide low rates to let start-ups use their services. This however is only for a certain period, and when the full pricing activates, it can eat up the profits really fast. It's also very hard to pivot then and shift the application to a different provider. Hiring good talent and engineering managers for such a problem will pay off.

Regulations

A lot has changed in terms of how data is seen from regulators and not paying attention to them can result in unnecessary legal actions. This should be studied well before starting the journey.