A lesson from camp

No, not computer camp. We're just home from a friend's birthday party, the theme of which was truly bad movies. (That kind of camp.) We arrived in time to polish off an MST3K (an episode that mocked one of the worst movies I've seen, actually--which is saying something). Then we proceeded to do our own MST3King of that 1938 (cough) "classic" now known as Reefer Madness. (I don't think I exaggerate by much when I say that its writing values were so low that you almost feel relieved for our forebears in that they shortly had WWII to take their minds off its sheer dreckishness.) And so on.

But I can forgive the awfulness of a movie when it's evident that the people making it didn't take themselves seriously and were obviously having fun with it. To me, that speaks more of professionalism than a group that clocked its time and hoped that the whole mess went direct to video before anyone noticed.

One of the buzzwords of software, particularly in the startup space, is MVP, or "minimum viable product" The gist of MVP is that you release only the absolute bare-bones of the produc and let the customer decide what should be fleshed out next. Which is a wonderful tonic for bloatware and all, but I think that the austerity of the principle neglects the fact that fully-fleshed out human beings are writing the code, creating the graphics, pulling together the documentation, etc. And people like to have fun--not as an excuse to not work, but as part of work itself. In fact, if the main point of shoving a lean product out the door is to be first to market, that urgency will create more stress than usual for a software release. If the culture frowns on making the process fun, that only adds to the stress. Because that kind of culture is ultimately frowning on a facet of the creative process itself. Which might work long enough to roll out version 1.0. But I strongly believe that the cost will be not only felt, but compounded as well, with each subsequent release.

So if there's a certain amount of campiness to the process, relax. People who can work and play hard at the same time are the professionals you want for your team.