Hi! A lot of people have already given great responses so I'll try not to repeat their advice. As I said in the post bad outcomes can be valuable if you learn from it and fix things.
As it stands it seems that maybe there's a lack of communication/visibility (I'm echoing @ben
here). And my number one suggestion would be to start having weekly demos if you don't have them already. That's a quick, easy way to make sure that you and your dev team is aligned, and it'll give them the opportunity to ask questions and clarify the scope of the project.
From my experience, most projects end up delayed or with a different result than the original specs. And that's where Agile practices come in handy to make sure you can revise your backlog often, change priorities if needed, but more importantly to ensure that you can ship bits of value early and get feedback on it.
So, the second thing I'd ask is how far are you from being able to put your product in the hands of people? If it's not done already you need to absolutely focus on getting to a shareable state, even if it's with close friends. The reason why it's important is that on the one hand, it'll give the team a sense of completion and will help to keep people motivated, and on the other hand, it'll teach you a lot about what people want.
Should I negatively judge them for having a delayed so long?
You need to embrace that responsibility as well. It's rarely the fault of a single party when things go south, and there can be many factors responsible for a delay in delivery. The best approach to move forward, in my opinion, would be to address that collectively rather than finding someone to blame.
Say "Alright, this is where we are, and this is where we need to be. What's the best way to get there folks?". You need to reach out to your team and see what they think, and understand how they can best deliver the product. Asking that question is a way to empower them and make them accountable. If you just tell people how they should do their work, then you'll only be projecting what's best for you.
I hope this helps, in the end, it's a lot about communication.
Hi! A lot of people have already given great responses so I'll try not to repeat their advice. As I said in the post bad outcomes can be valuable if you learn from it and fix things.
As it stands it seems that maybe there's a lack of communication/visibility (I'm echoing @ben here). And my number one suggestion would be to start having weekly demos if you don't have them already. That's a quick, easy way to make sure that you and your dev team is aligned, and it'll give them the opportunity to ask questions and clarify the scope of the project.
From my experience, most projects end up delayed or with a different result than the original specs. And that's where Agile practices come in handy to make sure you can revise your backlog often, change priorities if needed, but more importantly to ensure that you can ship bits of value early and get feedback on it.
So, the second thing I'd ask is how far are you from being able to put your product in the hands of people? If it's not done already you need to absolutely focus on getting to a shareable state, even if it's with close friends. The reason why it's important is that on the one hand, it'll give the team a sense of completion and will help to keep people motivated, and on the other hand, it'll teach you a lot about what people want.
You need to embrace that responsibility as well. It's rarely the fault of a single party when things go south, and there can be many factors responsible for a delay in delivery. The best approach to move forward, in my opinion, would be to address that collectively rather than finding someone to blame.
Say "Alright, this is where we are, and this is where we need to be. What's the best way to get there folks?". You need to reach out to your team and see what they think, and understand how they can best deliver the product. Asking that question is a way to empower them and make them accountable. If you just tell people how they should do their work, then you'll only be projecting what's best for you.
I hope this helps, in the end, it's a lot about communication.
(As a FYI this is one of the issue we want to solve with Squadlytics by making weekly check-ins easier)