[csg fall 2004] Mitch Kapor's list of lessons learned

As I reported separately, OSAF has slipped their development schedule for Chandler and have made significant changes in their architecture and plans.

During the Westwood Advisory Council meeting today, Mitch Kapor presented a list of lessons learned that I think generalizes for all sorts of development efforts, so I share it here:

Things learned

• Underestimated cost of ambition


• Hard decisions about product strategy and focus could have been made earlier


• Proved harder to build engineering organization


• cross-platform and rich clients are hard


• build and integration work is non-trivial