How do you approach the development of a new web application? If you are a solopreneur or SMB, you are not aiming for a big scale. You cannot afford well-known but costly development environments.
It is a challenge that I encountered repeatedly as a freelance consultant. Build it and ship it without overbuilding.
Here is the method that I usually use.
The Matrix
Think of the complete development process as a two-dimensional plane.
On the horizontal axis, we have the different phases of the evolution of the web application. This is a timeline of phases that it goes through.
The vertical time axis is the computing environment you will use.
The Time Axis — Phases
- Collection of emails
- Forthcoming — add information pages
- Production — add sign up/sign in and rea; functionality
- Add testimonials and other forms of social proof
- Scale up — multiple servers, load balancing
Of course, the production phase of development will be broken into multiple sub-phases.
In the action events platform I am building, we start with notifications via email. Later we will add notifications through SMS.
