What is the snowball effect in software engineering?
Last updated: March 13, 2024 Read in fullscreen view
Recommended for you
- 15 Feb 2024
What is a Cut-Over in Software Development? 40/1199 - 02 Nov 2023 Differences between software walkthrough, review, and inspection 27/2008
- 18 Oct 2020 How to use the "Knowns" and "Unknowns" technique to manage assumptions 22/995
- 05 Jul 2020 What is Sustaining Software Engineering? 16/1196
- 01 Oct 2020 Fail fast, learn faster with Agile methodology 15/977
- 20 Mar 2022 What is a Multi-Model Database? Pros and Cons? 11/1068
- 01 Mar 2023 What is Unit Testing? Pros and cons of Unit Testing? 9/362
- 19 Oct 2021 Is gold plating good or bad in project management? 8/756
- 10 Nov 2022 Poor Code Indicators and How to Improve Your Code? 8/214
- 30 Jan 2022 What Does a Sustaining Engineer Do? 8/557
- 06 Feb 2021 Why fail fast and learn fast? 7/378
- 01 Feb 2024 How long does it take to develop software? 7/212
- 01 Mar 2023 Bug Prioritization - What are the 5 levels of priority? 6/207
- 18 Aug 2022 What are the consequences of poor requirements with software development projects? 5/244
- 31 Dec 2021 What is a Data Pipeline? 5/188
- 14 Oct 2021 Advantages and Disadvantages of Time and Material Contract (T&M) 5/795
- 08 Oct 2022 KPI - The New Leadership 4/558
- 31 Oct 2021 Tips to Fail Fast With Outsourcing 4/377
- 23 Sep 2021 INFOGRAPHIC: Top 9 Software Outsourcing Mistakes 3/413
- 22 Sep 2022 Why is it important to have a “single point of contact (SPoC)” on an IT project? 3/844
- 28 Dec 2021 8 types of pricing models in software development outsourcing 3/419
- 13 Dec 2020 Move fast, fail fast, fail-safe 3/294
- 02 May 2022 What Is RAID in Project Management? (With Pros and Cons) 3/736
- 10 Dec 2023 Pain points of User Acceptance Testing (UAT) 3/418
- 17 Feb 2022 Prioritizing Software Requirements with Kano Analysis 3/285
- 25 Apr 2021 What is outstaffing? 2/230
- 19 Apr 2021 7 Most Common Time-Wasters For Software Development 2/527
- 13 Nov 2021 What Is Bleeding Edge Technology? Are bleeding edge technologies cheaper? 2/457
- 03 Jul 2022 What is the difference between Project Proposal and Software Requirements Specification (SRS) in software engineering? 2/959
- 26 Dec 2023 Improving Meeting Effectiveness Through the Six Thinking Hats 1/205
- 05 Jan 2024 Easy ASANA tips & tricks for you and your team 1/181
- 11 Jan 2024 What are the Benefits and Limitations of Augmented Intelligence? 1/436
- 14 Mar 2024 Why should you opt for software localization from a professional agency? /117
- 12 Mar 2024 How do you create FOMO in software prospects? /131
- 21 Oct 2025 Cloud-Native Development: Why It’s the Future of Enterprise IT /43
- 10 Apr 2022 What is predictive analytics? Why it matters? /167
- 06 Nov 2019 How to Access Software Project Size? /236
What is the snowball effect theory?
The snowball effect is a psychological term that explains how small actions can cause bigger and bigger actions, ultimately resulting in a big impact. Imagine a snowball that is rolling down a snow-covered hill. It starts small, but as it gathers more momentum, it picks up more snow, making it larger and larger.
The Software Snowball Effect
It’s the ‘good software snowball’ effect. Here’s also the ‘bad software snowball effect’ but that one’s not relevant. Here’s what the good software snowball effect is:
Once the groundwork is laid, the further into a software project you get, the faster you can add functionality.
This is profound. It means that once the minimum viable product (MVP) is built, the rate at which you can add functionality, at least for a good piece of the life of a software project, grows exponentially! In other words, assume that it takes a year to get the MVP built and polished. In the following six months, you can expect to be able to at least double the functionality of the MVP. And in the six months after that, you will likely be able to do so again.
This doesn’t mean that it’s a good thing to lather on loads of ‘bells and whistles’ just because you can. One still needs to be disciplined in choosing what functionality to add and to be careful not to bloat the product with unnecessary features.
That said – that roadmap that you’ve been building since before the first line of code went down… That roadmap that’s been growing based on customer input and looking at other products and imagining what could be… that list of ‘must have’ features that’s been growing faster than you ever thought you’d ever be able to deliver on it… suddenly, it starts to shrink. Suddenly, you can deliver to your customers, great new features, much faster than you had been able to do before.
The reason this happens is quite simple: You start by building infrastructure; basic building blocks and various tools. Until these are built, progress is slow. But once the building blocks are available, you can start to combine them to produce bigger building blocks. And then you can combine those building blocks to build even bigger ones. Unlike building physical things, you don’t need to do much work to combine building blocks into bigger building blocks. It pretty much comes for free.
And that’s the beauty of software development. And right now, we, the product team at Scope 5, find ourselves in the happy position of having delivered a solid MVP and starting to reap the benefits and the joys of exponential productivity. And our customers are finding themselves in a similar happy position of seeing those great features they’ve been waiting for, rolling out at a quickening pace.
Via scope5
Explore more on these topics
Guest Blogging: The Definitive Guide
Top Trending Topics
Share This
Link copied!
Recently Updated News