Seeing the bigger picture

Every project starts with an idea. In my case, I wasn’t satisfied with the available animation tooling and strongly believed that I could do better.
It became my ambition to create the best animation software available and enable others to express their creative ideas.

So far..

I started Spirit one year ago. At the time, I didn’t realise what was lying in front of me. I now know that it’s not just as simple as building an app and handing it over to customers.
You could say I was a little naive and I probably underestimated the amount of work that is required.

Guarding the scope..

It’s easy to lose yourself in details and stop seeing the bigger picture. There are always things crossing your path which you cannot foresee, and obviously one is more important than the other.

Breaking down the requirements into smaller prioritised tasks is really important, especially when dealing with a large-scale project like Spirit.
Fortunately, there are many tools available that can help you organising these tasks. Personally, I love Trello, it’s super simple and it does the job very well.

I realised that the scope was a lot bigger than I initially thought. Some questions I have to deal with:

• How do I integrate updates?
• What’s the best way to collect valuable feedback from users?
• How to handle potential support?
• What to use for distribution?
• Which core-features are needed for the first release?
• Start a partnership or keep developing this on my own?
• Licensing / payments / invoices / legal conditions etc?
• What (SaaS / PaaS) services to use to save time?
• How to evaluate what can potentially scale later on?
• Oh, I need examples / documentation too.

As you can see these questions don’t have anything to do with the actual app itself, but are definitely mandatory in order to be able to release Spirit.

Meeting new people..

In the last few months I’ve met a lot of interesting people, shared many thoughts and drank gallons of coffee.
It surprised me that so many people are willing to help me in any possible way, just because they are open-minded and really believe in Spirit.

Seeing the potential Spirit has, does not come without any pressure. I do feel time-pressure and surely I hope to meet the user’s expectations.

The release..

When I started this project, I thought it would be a good idea to beta test with all my subscribers. At the time, I was totally unprepared and I had no idea of the amount of people who would possibly subscribe.
This list turned out to be larger than I could ever imagine. It wouldn’t make sense to test with thousands of users simultaneously, right? This would result in cluttered feedback and it absolutely wouldn’t be possible to handle the support.

So when can you expect Spirit to be available for download? The first beta version of the app is roughly there, but it needs some refinements and all services around it need to be up and running properly.

I’ve been quite busy on product development and I have to say that things are looking good! Beta testing will start in the Netherlands with a small group of selected users within the next two months. I will use their feedback to improve the app and make it stable and ready for production.

After releasing successfully in the Netherlands this spring/summer, Spirit will soon be available for the rest of the world. — I know, I can hardly wait either ;)

Despite all the hard work, it’s definitely worth it. Today I am very grateful that I’ve made the decision to start this adventure.

I really can’t wait to see the beautiful things you’re going to create with Spirit in the near future!