It’s about delivering
— February 25 2010
Developers and artists become often obsessed with perfection. They won’t ship their work until it’s perfect. And, of course, it’ll never be perfect.
All the work you put into something will be worthless, unless you get that product or site out.
Time is limited, opportunities will not be there forever and others will come with their pieces of work.
In an ideal case, we all think: Great product after years of work will become and instant success. But how? How will you communicate to your customers, unless you’ve built a userbase steadily over the years?
Of course it would help to deliver a proof of concept first. People would see it and use it, and you’d get valuable feedback to improve. You’d allow word-of-mouth to spread.
Whatever you are working on, get it out. Now! Some ideas:
- Make a site for it.
- Contact your first potential customers.
- Throw away that long feature list. Focus on your main 2 or 3 features.
- Release a private preview to a little group.
- Collect ideas for later. Don’t try to do everything now.
- Don’t implement something unless 90% of your users need it.
- Start charging as early as possible. It will show if your work is worth money and to who.
- Sell it, even if it doesn’t exist. You’ll need to master the sales techniques.
All your creativity, time and effort will be worth nothing unless you deliver. So find out the quickest way to do it and release it now.
As the guys at Thoughtbot put it: No art is ever finished. It only reaches a satisfying stopping point.
