Are you a Shipper or Perfectionist?
There are two types of people. The Shipper and the Perfectionist. The shipper ships a product on the deadline date even when the product is not fully finished. The perfectionist only ships a product when it is fully complete. For the perfectionist, even if a small feature is incomplete it is a good enough reason to delay the delivery of the product.
Who do you want to be? Which style is better?
Here is my personal take on this issue.
While we should always strive for best quality in the products we produce, the perfectionist mentality is the NOT the right attitude for today’s fast phased market place. In today’s market place the product has to be delivered at the right time. Velocity is key. The market place moves at such a rapid phase and by being a perfectionist you may not be able to deliver the product right on time. Another problem with the perfectionist is that the perfectionist always works under more pressure compared to the shipper. Since the perfectionist prolongs the delivery of the product, the product becomes (or feels) stale over time. This is why we often end up throwing up work that was dragging for moths or weeks. Overtime the passion fades away and we perceive the product useless, even though the product has some value. Perfectionist often get stuck with a product development because they are not willing to move on to the next stage.
On the other hand the shipper attitude is great for for today’s fast phased market. Shippers are usually in better control of their products. They are much happier people than the perfectionists. By shipping the product at the right time, shippers feel a sense of achievement. Therefore they are able to do a much better job in their second delivery of the product. By shipping the products on time, the shipper tames the Lizard Brain and Resistance that has been telling the shipper all sorts of negative things such as “the delivery will not happen”, “be careful”, “your product will not be received well in the market” etc.
Do you agree with what I am saying? Which camp are you in?
If the product has a quality score of 90% and if it is going to take substantially more time to achieve a quality score of 99%, will you ship the product as it is? or will you try to achieve a score of 99% and delay the delivery of the product?
Well, I like to call myself as a “Balanced Perfectionist”!
In the above scenario that you’ve presented, I would first do a little ROI research and try to find out the amount of extra time, effort, man-power and revenue that the certain product would require to reach the 99% perfect stage from a 90% state.
If I find out that the efforts needed is substantial and does not serve me any good in terms of ROI and if I am convinced that the product is still robust enough at it’s 90% perfect state, I would probably go ahead and ship it.
What would you do in such case?
@TechChunks,
I like the term “Balanced Perfectionist”. Thank you for your detailed comment.
What I would do is a Risk Analysis. I will be mainly looking for what will be the impact of delivering the product with a quality score of 90%? If the risks are low for both the customer and I then I will ship the product.
If the risk factors are high and if the 9% improvement in quality could either make or break the product I will delay the product delivery.