
Why you’ll always think your product is shit - nreece
http://andrewchenblog.com/2012/03/02/why-your-product-will-never-seem-like-its-good-enough/
======
aberman
So true. I think the sign of a great PM is the ability to see all the
imperfections but the self-control to focus on the things that matter and to
de-prioritize the things that don't.

It's easy to make a list of everything wrong with your product and spend
eternity trying to fix it all. It's harder to reconcile imperfection with the
reality of limited resources and business objectives.

~~~
andrew_null
+1. (I'm the author of the article)

~~~
Mjux
Thanks for the article, Andrew.

Content has a way of their own. Appreciation never really reaches upto the
perceived recognition. Being in content game and UX occasionally gives in the
same.

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softbuilder
>Pixar’s teams are ultimately a collaboration of creative people and software
engineers.

Grrr.

~~~
nopinsight
Can you explain to clarify? I and perhaps a few other people do not have
enough background information to deduce the reason of your 'Grrr'.

~~~
Dobbs
The implication that software engineers aren't "creative" people.

Many believe that software engineering is closer to art then it is to
engineering.

~~~
ryanbrunner
I could be wrong, but I think what you're seeing is industry jargon more than
a slight on software engineers. In movies and theatre, the "creative team"
refers to designers, directors, writers, etc. "Technicians" like camera
operators, CGI engineers, props people, etc, aren't on this team. It's not
meant to be a comment on their level of creativity, it's just a way of
delineating roles.

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jerf
I've had to counsel (for lack of a better word) team members who got
excessively demoralized and cynical about the product we were working on,
because all they ever hear about is what is broken, who is pissed about it,
and what deal fell through because of it, on what is largely a successful
product making a decent number of people happy. Make sure that you don't just
look up and check the global context sometimes, make sure your team members do
too, and help them if you have to.

~~~
JamesAn
I am reminded of the 'Cool Cam' anecdote, in which morale was shifted from
"Not only that, but everyone had grown tired enduring the stress of the weekly
'why-shouldn't-we-cancel-this-project' meetings with the executives" to "The
weekly meetings got easier, more developers were brought on, and the team
managed to put together one hell of a game."

[http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Classic-WTF-The-Cool-
Cam.asp...](http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Classic-WTF-The-Cool-Cam.aspx)

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robomartin
A friend of mine says that in the aerospace industry they have a saying that
goes something like: "Eventually you have to shoot the engineers and fly the
damn thing"

~~~
CharlieA
I suppose when you're strapping jet engines onto a metal tube, filling it with
people and hurling it into the sky you have to accept that things are never
quite going to be perfect.

In the same manner, it seems like the take-away is: if you create something,
then you'll always spot the flaws, but when the benefits outweigh those
drawbacks enough, you'll probably be the only one who really notices them.

~~~
einhverfr
Or as I like to put it (regarding LedgerSMB):

All accounting software sucks, LedgerSMB included. We are working hard to
reduce that until eventually we will be the first accounting software that
doesn't suck. But that is no reason to withhold our progress from our
userbase!

~~~
edash
I think LessAccounting may have beat you to that particular line of branding:
<http://lessaccounting.com/>

~~~
einhverfr
Well,not sure I would want to build a brand on that. It's not very customer-
positive. But I am glad they realize the same as well.

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RandallBrown
A friend of mine always tells me how buggy and terrible the software he works
on is. He says it's amazing that people even pay money for it.

I've used the software, and it's pretty great. It's easy to use, powerful, and
nothing else really compares to it, but he still thinks it's shit.

It's funny how spending your days making your product awesome will warp your
mind into thinking it's terrible.

~~~
einhverfr
Almost all software is buggy and terrible if you look at it closely enough.
There are few truly elegant, robust programs out there. Even PostgreSQL has
its warts....

However, the fact is..... you have to release continuously to make the
software better, and quality is also relative. As a friend of mine said, if
you are with a dwarf and you run into a dragon, you don't have to outrun the
dragon, only the dwarf!

I like to think as bad as the software I work on is, we are outrunning the
dwarves!

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joejohnson
This is a great article.

What if your product actually is shit though? To all the wannabe entrepreneurs
on here, if you feel that your product sucks, it's probably because it does,
not because it's a beautiful gem that you'll never be satisfied with.

~~~
Alexandervn
If it really sucks, people will tell you. So build something and ask for
feedback.

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thesash
One of my favorite quotes, from Lee Unkrich of Pixar: "We don’t ever finish a
film, I could keep on making it better. We’re just forced to release it."
<http://m.wired.com/magazine/2010/05/process_pixar/all/1>

Pixar is such an inspiring company when it comes to creativity, innovation,
and values. If you've never seen the excellent documentary "The Pixar Story",
I highly recommend it.

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ww520
Then the question becomes how do you know your product is good enough for
release despite all the shortcomings you know inside?

~~~
aberman
My 2¢:

If it's a software product, and you're debating whether it's time to release,
it's probably time to release.

If your customers try your product and quickly abandon it because of it's
imperfections, you prioritize fixing those imperfections. If they complain a
little, and a few of them leave after a while because they're fed up, it's
probably worth fixing those imperfections at some point, but you may want to
focus on other priorities.

~~~
kylebrown
What about the importance of the 'first impression'. This is an overwhelming
concern for the PM of my current product, and going for that 'extra 10%' is
causing many delays to launch.

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polemic
So so true.

On the flipside - there is usually also a bunch of stuff that you know is
_freakin' awesome_ , but which sits way in the background, and explaining what
it is and why it is nearly impossible without the context of having worked on
the project.

~~~
evincarofautumn
I’ve heard something like that phenomenon called a _black triangle_. It’s a
thing that took a lot of effort to make, that’s awesome on the inside; when
you run it, all the developers see the output and know it is deeply
meaningful—but all anybody else sees is something as meaningless as a spinning
black triangle.

~~~
tomjen3
As far as I heard it referred to a game development company which had spend
weeks making sure the code could compile for the new platform, setting up
asset pipelines, etc.

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maverhick
In the context of this article, it is only true for people who care as much,
have spent years caring about their work and continue to do so. Surviving
sufficiently long enough in the world where you get to a point where you are
truly awesome at your craft and still get to make these choices and worry
about them and think about them and have those choices bother you is the realm
of very few fantastic people.

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jmitcheson
I think the root cause of this is that engineers are constantly working on
things that are broken or not working properly yet. By definition of our jobs:
it wasn't broken, we would stop working on it.

Consequently I think engineers naturally focus on what is undone, rather than
what is finished.

~~~
sliverstorm
_By definition of our jobs: it wasn't broken, we would stop working on it_

This is inaccurate, IMO. Rather, engineers are constantly working on improving
things. If it was perfect, we would stop working on it, but nothing is ever
perfect.

Hence why knowing what is worth fixing and what is not can be just as valuable
as knowing how to fix it.

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radley
I see this all the time with clients & projects and it's quite simple:

\- The familiar becomes common quickly, thus losing the shine & new car smell.

\- Your imagination will always outpace your productivity and imagination is
where the fun is...

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rtisticrahul
Nice article. Its true every developer knows the weakness about his product
and when other users use his product he just hopes that they don't catch those
weak points of his product. But still a product maker should always love and
admire his product. If we won't love the things that we make how can we expect
others to love it. Sorry, but I won't be the one who thinks his product is
shit.

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thewisedude
Ofcourse, I think everybody agrees that there are shitty products. I would not
be surprised if somebody told me that there are products which are considered
shitty by overwhelming number of people (developers and users alike). Now that
said, whats a good metric to fairly evaluate if a product is shitty or not?
May be sales? may be something else?

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evincarofautumn
Corollary: accept that your product has imperfections, and be forthright about
it. An imperfect thing that works, that you can talk about and improve upon,
is _infinitely_ better than promises, excuses, or silence. Even if the thing
you made is not the thing you meant to make, it is 100% more thing than the
nothing you had before.

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stretchwithme
I think most people create software (and food and everything else) to add some
enjoyment or lift some burden.

The desire to be perfect is part of that. We wish to delight, not annoy.

But sometimes we are just afraid of having our egos bruised.

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Hominem
Something that adds to this is that kudos are mentioned in passing but screw
ups are the end of the world. You can service thousands of clients a day but
that one that gets pissed ...

------
jluxenberg
Ira Glass has a great take on this:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI23U7U2aUY>

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halayli
I usually compare software development to painting, it's always hard to know
when is the final brush stroke.

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instakill
Surely this can be classified as one of the many cognitive fallacies, which
one though?

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stretchwithme
There will always be top ten things that need work.

