Roundup: Be pragmatic, launch products
A roundup of good articles inclining you towards action:
Plan for the present and likely future (Ask a Good Product Manager)
A “good enough” solution might perform well for several months or years; unfortunately, those looking for the “perfect” answer will reject what is “good enough” and insist on a solution that is usually more complicated, more complex, and more expensive.
Not only is perfectionism risky and expensive, it’s an effective silencer of communication. As the bar for ideas gets higher, fewer junior product managers or engineers or QA folks feel empowered to contribute and lots of potentially “good enough” ideas go unheard.
“Analysis paralysis” and “utopia myopia” (On Product Management)
We all know that “analysis paralysis” is the state where one cannot make a decision because they get stuck trying to figure out all the possibilities…On the other end of the scale are those situations where a decision is made by someone with little or no debate, research or analysis…
Utopia myopia – I sincerely hope that phrase catches on, by the way – usually comes from either over-relying on domain expertise or feeling that analysis has to be all-or-nothing. Often the best tactic is to temporarily throw out the big goals and start with “what thing, no matter how tiny, can we learn/question?”
Set your priorities (Joel on Software)
So if you want to get things done, you positively have to understand at any given point in time what is the most important thing to get done right now and if you’re not doing it, you’re not making progress at the fastest possible rate.
Joel’s team used a variant on ordinal prioritization, giving team members a set amount of currency and allowing them to allocate it towards “buying” features.
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