When you are in the thick of things, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. That picture may be 1 month, 3 months, or 6 months (plus!) away, but people (myself included) can get wrapped up in not being perfect, seemingly not doing enough, or thinking you are doing things wrong.
You can’t get worried. Well, you can – if you don’t have certain key things in place.
It’s easy to get all down and razzled if you see constant new “competition” popping up all over the place every week, or other products getting press yours isn’t. Quite frankly, it’s just not worth it. Take it as inspiration, learn what you can from it, and press on.
Remember – it comes down to a couple of things. Are you solving a problem people have, and does your product add some good value while solving it? If everything from the top-down (I’m not talking organizationally, really) is aligned, that means you have placed your bets and can just worry about execution.
It’s all about placing a bet and executing. “Wow” features and “silver bullets” are not what you rely on to build successful products. It’s all in the fundamentals. Those things may come along, or maybe you are developing one without even realizing it – but you can’t hold things up waiting for those ideas to come along.
You need to just do a few things really well. In fact, things I’ve already mentioned:
- Ensure you are solving a problem
- Align things form top to bottom
- Execute — quickly and with confidence
This “top-down” stuff I speak of is from the vision / problem identification, to the roadmap, to the requirements, to each release being pushed out the door. There are a few strategies that go into shipping a product which I may detail in other posts (for example, is this product brand new? does it already exist? at what stage of the lifecycle is it?), but for now take solace in having a clear vision to which all decisions are baselined.
If you are focused on something (almost obsessively so) you are doing everything right. Of course the organization could fail – but all you can do is pick a problem and go after it as hard as you can. You can’t solve all of the World’s problems by building 15-20 products at once.
Remember — it’s all about being good enough. Well, in most cases. Tony Stark may have a problem doing that, but start-ups building Web applications should not.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Heh. I good inspirational post. I used to be an enemy of ‘good enough’ until I decided to rework it to ‘good enough for now’ with a catch. And that catch is a feedback loop. I expect to be learning continuously, and thus continually redefining good enough (either do more, do it faster, do it with less, whatever).
Over time ‘good enough for now with a catch’ becomes ‘better than I ever thought I could be’. Which is where I really want to end up. I just don’t have to be there yet.
Heh. I good inspirational post. I used to be an enemy of 'good enough' until I decided to rework it to 'good enough for now' with a catch. And that catch is a feedback loop. I expect to be learning continuously, and thus continually redefining good enough (either do more, do it faster, do it with less, whatever).
Over time 'good enough for now with a catch' becomes 'better than I ever thought I could be'. Which is where I really want to end up. I just don't have to be there yet.