The tension of speed and quality — Nr. 129
Before you launch the product, people worry about how fast you can ship it.
There's always tension about how fast and how good.
Before you launch the product, people worry about how fast you can ship it.
After you launch the product, people judge how good it is.
It's like a rubber band. You stretch it, and there's a tension—a tension between speed and quality.
On one extreme, you can over-optimize the speed. The quality of the product might suffer, and you might release something that's not even useful for people.
On the other hand, you can over-optimize the quality. You want to keep improving the details. Some call it: "perfectionists never ship the work" because they keep pushing the deadline.
You want to avoid going too extreme on either one. Finding this sweet spot is not easy. It's a learned skill. You can't study it without doing it. You will face this tension in your career and must use your intuition to make a call.
Here are a few questions to dance with this tension:
What's the most basic functionality of our product that makes it useful? Pick one or two things that you don't want to sacrifice. If people can't send a message on Slack, they can't get the value. Fill in the blank: If people can't (do this), they can't get the value.
What's our baseline of quality? Pick the standard of usability and delight. Reflect: "Can I sacrifice this interaction or UX?" Whenever you need to make a trade-off. This requires some taste. This is the "art" of building a product.
Remember, if you’re still looking for a product-market fit, you want to validate whether what you’re building is useful first.
Personal update
Update #1: Some asked about 1:1 - if you’re seeking guidance or growing your skill. Consider booking the 1:1 session.
Update #2: We’ve launched a new landing page for Today (usetoday.app). Consider joining the waitlist. We’ll release the Chrome extension as an early access next month!
