Little about the creative process

This article will be interesting / useful for those who have just started cutting their startup, who are in the process, and those who have already achieved a lot can just check out some of our statements.

“We were constantly encouraged to keep moving forward, to be in motion for the sake of motion. We were required to constantly update. Changes themselves are important, but they have a limit. Yes, an update is a change, an attempt to “do it differently”, a desire to change and redo it. At the same time protecting time-tested principles. ”Robert Galvin, former CEO of Motorola.

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About time-tested principles, this is all very cool, but when you don’t have time, or not, it’s not enough time for proven principles to appear in the project, what then how to be?

We will not tell the outstanding secret, we will not tell any secret, because in our opinion such simply does not exist!



Each project is unique, something that worked perfectly in one project will not always work in another. In the first months of work, real chaos reigns, creative chaos and how we think this chaos just needs to be tamed, to make it manageable.

We are not talking about planning, writing down everything that is possible on the marker boards, pasting all the office walls with yellow pieces of paper with timing and deadlines, diving into all different task managers. I never liked diaries, outluki and other similar things.

Planning allows you to plan everything, calculate expenses, reduce risks, and a whole bunch of different benefits from it, BUT it kills the creative process.

How can you plan your train of thought, the flow of ideas ...? Yes, this is a question, if anyone knows the answer to it, share it in the comments, we will be very grateful. Memory cards do not count.

But you know, it is about the creative process and I want to talk. About the thoughts that climb into the head 24/7, about when you wake up in the middle of the night to record one of them, and then you do not sleep with her until the morning, because as it seemed to you at that moment, it is brilliant and cool, unless no one had such a thing !?

I used to write everything down in a notebook, and in the morning to sort these squiggles and try to translate it into a normal language. Then discuss the whole thing with the team. Developers are usually dry and they do not care, they are busy and sit in their matrix, the designer is creative and always ready to discuss the "nonsense" that got you into the head at night. Marketer - do not even know what to say. And after a while, everything is already in the subject and they are discussing what can be squeezed out of it - This is the first sign that the idea is to turn into a hypothesis, and this is real magic!

If you get the idea to turn into a hypothesis, then it should be quickly checked, and most importantly remember that the Best is the enemy of the good!
Throw out all the perfectionism and test the hypothesis. Here is what needs to be done!

And here, out of chaos, order is born, in theory! It would seem that here, this is the final straight, but who knows where this finish is? After all, there is no limit to perfection.
And planning begins again: deadlines, budget, required revenue, operating activities, internal and external processes, marketing and blah blah blah ...
And if this finish in the process moves? And he always moves, what then?



But after all, creative work for the sake of creativity is also impossible to do.

It was in this creative chaos that we worked for these few months, we received an excellent feedback on Megamind, thank you for that! This of course does not mean that we rushed to implement all the Wishlist, but I confess honestly, there was such a desire. Sometimes a pause helps to understand what is wrong, where you are going, whether you are on the right path.

The most important thing is not to bury the creative process, then the risk to fail everything multiply increases, do not be afraid to abandon the work done and turn away from the path if you understand that you are not going there!

The main thing is not to try to make everything perfect and immediately try to roll out all the features of your project. Each hypothesis must be tested. After all, it may turn out that what you have been doing with the whole team for several months may simply be unnecessary, or necessary, but you will hardly be able to sell it!

Ideal to divide everything into small pieces and produce in short iterations, a week or two, ideally!

If your idea has become a hypothesis, then check it, as soon as possible, on people who are not familiar to you!

So about the principles of time-tested:

“Do not promise anything, do not count on anything, do something!”

And about what our service has experienced, what has become and where it is going, we will definitely tell in the next article!