Good enough becomes awesome

Theres an old saying that good enough is good enough - it's really a comment on delivery and meeting deadlines. As a team we are constantly delivering to deadlines, both ours and our clients, and we know what excellent is so we always strive for excellence - trouble is, the web changes every day and what was excellent today may only be "good enough" tomorrow.
If we look at that project thats been on your desk (or inbox) for weeks, it would appear to be nearly finished, maybe you want to do a few final tweaks to it, maybe you will get it QA'd (Quality Assurance tested) just one more time, is the spelling all correct etc, etc. The question is, deliver it now or wait until it 110% awesome?

Delivering now doesn't mean it wont ever be awesome. Even Apple delivers on "good enough" - who remembers the first iPods?  The first generation of iPods had some issues but Apple sold truckloads because they were good enough to be awesome. They keep improving them and iPods are still awesome.

You can deliver now on your website or software app. and keep improving it too. Each day you say "Lets wait until we have the ... finished" is another day you put off the launch of your project.

You know that tomorrow you are going to think of a better way to do something, say something or display something. Its a given, the big question is are you brave enough to launch as you are - is it good enough to launch - can your project be delivered now?

This week we launched our new profiles pages. We know from our web stats that these pages are looked at a lot. I surmise that people are checking us out before they work with us, so they are pretty important pages on our website. The deadline for delivery was the end of May. The pages were delivered with some photos missing and two quotes missing - was this going to lose us business? I wouldn't think so. Were the pages complete and fabulous? nearly, they were good enough. Should I have waited until they were complete? Whats complete? Each day brings new information and new ideas to add to our projects. One of the joys of the web is its ability to embrace change - I can update my website everyday if I have time. So can you!

Which brings me full circle to what projects have you got that are just waiting for that final 5% before they are delivered? Can you deliver them now and make changes next week when you have more information. If we are talking about webpages or software applications, consider what can be delivered now:

• if its a webpage/s:
• look at the webstats after its launched and make adjustments based on whats popular
• get a friend or colleague to give you feedback and make adjustments
• watch people using your pages and make adjustments
• if its software:
• pretend you are a user and find out how hard it is to use
• try it on different computers and make adjustments
• ask a friend to try it and make adjustments

Get away from your ego, launch now and good enough project is on its way to becoming awesome.