Sometimes management’s biggest fault is a lack of action.
In many cases, project owners want to produce the best product or service. And, as a result, are slow to finalize a project. This happens a lot of times with software builds. The project owner wants to have a product that is bug free and perfect for the end user.
As business owners, moving forward and creating new opportunities is the key to progress - and we need to continually put something out there. In the words of Fred Foster, an inspirational trainer & speaker, “it is more important to be accurate as it is to be precise. For example, if you are shooting at a target, it is better to have more shots in the circle around the bulls eye than to actually hit the bulls eye.”
This means that even if the project is only 80% or 90% perfect, it is better to move forward than to strive for the 100% - because it may never be 100% perfect and the opportunity may pass you by.
I like to call this approach to completing projects “The Google Approach”. Google is notorious for creating software that is in Beta version but is available for use. We recently used this approach when our Tax App for the Android and iPhone was created. We could have spent another month re-designing the interface and/or including more tax data but decided to finalize and get the App out before the end of the 2010 tax year. This worked well and we have had thousands of downloads.
It is important to continually create and build. When doing so, be sure to not let perfection get in the way of action.
