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It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done

nytimes.com

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Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done

#91

Post by nostrademons »

paddlepop wrote: post #70
bluGill wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For software you should make something - any part - work and release it. Then do regular feature releases after that. If you are not working alone you can ask your marketing people for help, sometimes it is worth waiting for a big bang release, sometimes not (For some things if you miss Christmas you should delay until next Christmas). I recommend you err on the side of release too soon - customers are the ultimate a…

This doesn't work so well for video games. Reviews come out saying its thin on content with a score to match and can kill a game before its had a chance to expand. Developers have started trying to do this more often lately with mixed results, DICE and Blizzard are high profile examples of this. Blizzards latest World of Warcraft expansion was heavily criticized for the lack of content on release day and has yet to s…

It doesn't work for AAA games, but it can work really well for indie games. Think of something like Factorio, where version 0.1 looked like this:

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-184

Then they just kept releasing every week for 7 years, and now you have people building CPUs and explaining Apache Kafka with it.

Ostriv is another recent game that comes to mind as having a similar development cycle. Also many F2P MMOs - most of the non-Blizzard online games I know do regular releases that frequently change the game mechanics (often, to a big player uproar) but still keep their userbase. Fortnight and Pokemon Go are two big ones here.

Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done

#92

Post by michaelbrave »

paddlepop wrote: post #70
bluGill wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For software you should make something - any part - work and release it. Then do regular feature releases after that. If you are not working alone you can ask your marketing people for help, sometimes it is worth waiting for a big bang release, sometimes not (For some things if you miss Christmas you should delay until next Christmas). I recommend you err on the side of release too soon - customers are the ultimate a…

This doesn't work so well for video games. Reviews come out saying its thin on content with a score to match and can kill a game before its had a chance to expand. Developers have started trying to do this more often lately with mixed results, DICE and Blizzard are high profile examples of this. Blizzards latest World of Warcraft expansion was heavily criticized for the lack of content on release day and has yet to s…

You are right, but the situations with wow and battlefront are a bit more complex than that. Wow was more due to unfun mechanics and poor reward systems than lack of content (though that was a factor). Also battlefront had a size-able protest due to pricing disagreements. Both of which are dependent on community so as it diminishes it rolls downhill fast.

Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done

#93

Post by andrewstuart »

nostrademons wrote: post #90
andrewstuart wrote: post #78

I still build out everything required to realise the vision, and that usually takes at least months to build. There's an analogy in startups that you should build a great skateboard first if your vision is to build a better car, but I just don't agree. If you have a vision for a better car then you need to deliver a better car, not a skateboard, because, well a skateboard just isn't a car. https://blog.crisp.se/2016/…

In practical startup terms, if your idea is to deliver either a better car or a better skateboard, you've already failed. Both these industries have a century of optimization behind them; even if you did manage to catch up, any useful innovations would be copied by incumbents. Successful startups usually come out of new markets: areas where the environment has changed such that existing product categories or delivery…

The real question is "what, exactly is an MVP?"

Some people interpret an MVP almost literally as almost nothing - just a web page that describes the idea and asks for email addresses.

Others interpret the MVP as almost nothing, but a "workable" almost nothing - i.e. some code that users can find. After users have found it, the code will be iterated upon until the original vision is realised.

The skateboard people interpret an MVP as making a series of easier-to-build similar, broadly analagous products on a path to eventually building the full product that you envision.

I interpret the MVP as being the minimum system that completely realises the vision. That might takes months to build. but the point is that when any user sees it, they should understand completely what this thing is meant to be. It doesn't mean the software is complete in every possible way, but it does mean that everything needed to make original vision working and obvious.

Speaking to the original post, this takes time and it might take alot of time.

Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done

#94

Post by nerdponx »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #86
gowld wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's barely a restatement of the question "how do I stop procrastinating", not an answer. Advice like "find a way to start, and finishing will come later" is at least a substantial step forward. (But still incomplete, as it doesn't solve the problems of distraction, meandering, prioritization, time management, perfectionism)

It's not a restatement of the question; it's an algorithm. The problem with procrastination is that it has so many different potential causes and idiosyncrasies that a random advice from the Internet or self-help literature isn't likely to work long-term (once the novelty factor wears off, which for me is usually around a week). The solution really seems to be to keep trying all of the advice, one after another, in c…

It's not a restatement of the question; it's an algorithm.

This is what I meant, thank you for stepping in to clarify.

Figuring out "what's wrong" in a case like this isn't always easy. Sometimes you don't actually need to know the underlying reason, and mediation or journaling just works and that's all you ever need to do.

Other times it's not so easy. That's when other interventions like psychotherapy (not just the traditional headshrink-and-couch version) can become relevant and important.

Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done

#95

Post by jdsully »

rchaud wrote: post #76
glennpratt wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you use the first iPhone? It had a ton of gaps, even in the market at the time. I believe they would have hamstrung it if not addressed in subsequent versions. I personally have never viewed iPhone as an example of perfectionism in product delivery. To me it's a whole bunch of solid execution over a very long time scale, before and after introduction.

Consumers and the press were much more forgiving of the iPhone's shortcomings than they were with anybody else. The 2007 iPhone was 2G only (when 3G on Nokia, Samsung, and Blackberry phones was standard), and it constantly dropped calls on AT&T in the US. Steve Jobs was in full reality distortion mode thanks to several successful iPod/Mac releases, and people loved the showmanship. Loyalty to Apple wasn't purely abou…

The polish was in the fluidity of the interface. To make touch easy the interface couldn’t jump around just as you touched the screen.

Its not that the iPhone was fast - but when it couldn’t render it showed a square pattern and still scrolled roughly in tune with your finger. None of the other players thought that was important.

Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done

#96

Post by [deleted] »

itwy wrote: post #8
CharlesW wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That worked, thanks! In Chrome, I was able to use "Site Settings" to disable JavaScript for [*.]nytimes.com for the current incognito session only. [TLDR: Voltaire was right, perfect is the enemy of good.]

"le mieux est l'ennemi du bien." is wrongly translated into "perfect is the enemy of good". The correct translation is "the better is the enemy of good". Totally different meaning IMO. I understand it as the new "better" will eventually replace the existing "good".

[deleted]

Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done

#97

Post by Godel_unicode »

nostrademons wrote: post #90
andrewstuart wrote: post #78

I still build out everything required to realise the vision, and that usually takes at least months to build. There's an analogy in startups that you should build a great skateboard first if your vision is to build a better car, but I just don't agree. If you have a vision for a better car then you need to deliver a better car, not a skateboard, because, well a skateboard just isn't a car. https://blog.crisp.se/2016/…

In practical startup terms, if your idea is to deliver either a better car or a better skateboard, you've already failed. Both these industries have a century of optimization behind them; even if you did manage to catch up, any useful innovations would be copied by incumbents. Successful startups usually come out of new markets: areas where the environment has changed such that existing product categories or delivery…

This sounds an awful lot like the famous HN criticism of Dropbox; don't make a better version of something which already exists. Is there any existing data about this (whether new markets or established ones are more fertile ground for startups)?

It seems to me that GoPro did a pretty great job innovating in a highly established market, for example. PayPal is another good case study here.

Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done

#98

Post by echelon »

nostrademons wrote: post #90
andrewstuart wrote: post #78

I still build out everything required to realise the vision, and that usually takes at least months to build. There's an analogy in startups that you should build a great skateboard first if your vision is to build a better car, but I just don't agree. If you have a vision for a better car then you need to deliver a better car, not a skateboard, because, well a skateboard just isn't a car. https://blog.crisp.se/2016/…

In practical startup terms, if your idea is to deliver either a better car or a better skateboard, you've already failed. Both these industries have a century of optimization behind them; even if you did manage to catch up, any useful innovations would be copied by incumbents. Successful startups usually come out of new markets: areas where the environment has changed such that existing product categories or delivery…

> even if you did manage to catch up, any useful innovations would be copied by incumbents.

If your optimization is sufficiently novel, can't you use intellectual property to protect yourself?

If that isn't an option, how do you provide yourself enough runway to scale fast enough to escape the incumbents?

Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done

#99

Post by nostrademons »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #97
nostrademons wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practical startup terms, if your idea is to deliver either a better car or a better skateboard, you've already failed. Both these industries have a century of optimization behind them; even if you did manage to catch up, any useful innovations would be copied by incumbents. Successful startups usually come out of new markets: areas where the environment has changed such that existing product categories or delivery…

This sounds an awful lot like the famous HN criticism of Dropbox; don't make a better version of something which already exists. Is there any existing data about this (whether new markets or established ones are more fertile ground for startups)? It seems to me that GoPro did a pretty great job innovating in a highly established market, for example. PayPal is another good case study here.

In the eyes of its users DropBox is a fundamentally different product from the filesharing sites like YouSendIt that already existed, or the techie utilities like rsync that HN commenters compared it to. There's an easy way to see this: people talk about dropping a file in their DropBox, they don't talk about this new filesharing program they're using called DropBox.

Similarly, people talk about buying a GoPro and putting footage of it up on YouTube. They don't talk about buying a digital camera from GoPro and putting their videos up on this video-sharing site called YouTube.

Similarly, people Google questions and Xerox pages, they don't search the web with Google and copy documents with a Xerox copier.

Conversely, people stop at the gas station (which might happen to be a Mobil or Exxon or 76 or Valero) in their car (which might happen to be a Honda or Subaru or Ford) on the way to the supermarket (which out here is probably a Safeway, but that varies depending on location). Or they might stop on their way to Whole Foods, which actually did succeed in differentiating, while driving a Tesla.

The customer's mental model is the only thing that matters here. If you're building a car or a skateboard, you're seeking to fit into an existing category in their head. Even if you win (which is unlikely, because incumbents optimize very heavily with lots of resources), you lose, because you're a commodity in a market with lots of substitutes. If you want to actually win - in the sense of create a monopoly product that defines its own market - you, as an entrepreneur, need to be thinking in terms of the overall problem that the user wants solved (transportation, or information access, or answers) so that you can define the terms of the market in a way that you're the only reasonable solution.

Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done

#100

Post by notacode »

gowld wrote: post #27
itwy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"le mieux est l'ennemi du bien." is wrongly translated into "perfect is the enemy of good". The correct translation is "the better is the enemy of good". Totally different meaning IMO. I understand it as the new "better" will eventually replace the existing "good".

Do you have a citation for that? Wikipedia disagrees on the history (it's originally Italian before French: "Il meglio è l'inimico del bene"), and playing with Google Translate shows its ambiguious without context http://go/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good https://www.google.com/search?q=le+mieux+translation

“Il meglio è nemico del bene”
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