The shadow app: I often hear developers say that their job is not to develop one application, but instead to develop two apps -- the public-facing application, and the private application, the "shadow app," which helps the company understand how the first application is working.
Sampling and testing:
Let's show it to 0.1% of our visitors today, and see how they react. Is option A better than option B? Let's try them both with 10,000 users each, and see which one works better.
Build on your own API:
Of course many web app startups provide APIs, so external developers can build apps on top of their functionality and data. I was surprised to hear, though, how many of these companies build their own public-facing web sites second, by building on top of a web services API they develop first.
One developer or set of developers works on the application's "kernel," exposed through the API; another works on the "view" the company exposes through its web site.
Ship timestamps, not versions:
Gone are the days of 1.0, 1.1, and 1.3.17b6. They have been replaced by the '20060210-1808:32 push'
Developers -- and users -- do the quality assurance:
More and more startups seem to be explicitly opting out of formalized quality assurance (QA) practices and departments
each developer is assigned to maintain their own features and respond to bug reports from users or other developers or employees.
Developers -- and executives -- do the support:
the best way to motivate developers is to let them see just one flamemail deriding the bugs in their work.
The eternal beta:
Following Google's lead, many companies stick "beta" on their logos and leave it there for months or years.
as a way of setting expectations, or excusing faults, about the current state of the application.
