To Perfect or to Ship

It’s the question we often agonize about: do we wait and perfect things or do we ship it as it is? Perfection might take too long…but ship too early and it might crash and burn. Getting it absolutely right would increase costs…worse, the guy who shipped as is might grab the market.

Seth Godin advocates shipping. He believes in a practical definition of perfection:
“Perfect doesn't mean flawless. Perfect means it does exactly what I need it to do.”
If you are focusing on perfection on aspects other than what the product needs to do, then you are wasting your effort:
“Polished perfect isn't better than perfect, it's merely shinier. And late.”

Then there’s the Steve Jobs view on perfection. Today it is hard to imagine a phone without apps. Yet Jobs actually hated the idea of letting unknown people write software that would run on his beloved iPhone! Luke Dormehl explains why:
“The way he (Steve Jobs) viewed it, loosening his grip on the perfect Zen aura that surrounded his devices would simply mean allowing them to be compromised by someone with less exacting standards than his own. It would be like letting fly-by-night decorators help Michelangelo finish painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.”
Superbly worded, isn’t it?

Most managers subscribe to Godin’s view; and most engineers to Jobs’. So you wouldn’t be surprised that as an engineer, I choose to close with this Dilbert strip:

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