When developing a new product, you can put your heart and soul into everything that you do. This is because you care deeply about what you’re doing, and you want to make it the best you can. This is a completely natural and rational approach.
However, there is a line in the ground that is almost impossible to see until it’s too late. The fine line between perfectionism and good enough. And there’s nothing surer in this world that kills products and projects quicker than trying to make it perfect.
Some common warning signs that you that you’re about to cross the line are comments like ‘when we’ve added one more feature then we’ll ship it’ or ‘if we just changed X then we could make it do Y.’
Just this week, a project manager was explaining to me that the latest samples of a new product due to imminently ship to a customer didn’t meet expectations and had some minor issues. The PM proposed delaying the shipment so she could work with the engineering team to fix the issues and make a new set of samples. A natural and well-intentioned response to a common project challenge.
Unfortunately, there was a major downside to this plan. It meant delaying the shipment of samples to the customer who needed them as soon as possible so they could start their initial testing. So, what do we do next?
In these situations, it’s important to remember what the goal is. From the PM’s perspective she wanted the samples to be perfect. However, there’s no such thing – the sample just needs to be good enough for the customer. How do we know if the samples are good enough? Sometimes it’s impossible to answer this question without involving the customer in the discussion.
Being transparent about the situation and involving them in the decision making will often lead to a positive outcome. People are usually willing to overlook some minor issues providing that they have something in their hand that works.
It’s worth repeating that there is NO such thing as a perfect product. Every product ever made has defects or glitches. Often these are fixed or improved in a newer version. Take the iPhone, first launched in 2007 and currently on its 16th version and counting!
There is a great quote about perfectionism ‘being the enemy of progress’ and this is so true. The next time your product faces a potential delay due to a minor non-compliance or issue, instead think about the bigger goal and focus on just making it good enough.
