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I was there staring at my computer screen at 11 PM on a Tuesday in Limerick, contemplating whether adding that extra animation to our product dashboard was worth missing dinner with my wife and twins for the third night running. As my will to live ebbed away with each pixel adjustment, a colleague messaged me: "Shipping is a feature, mate. Let it go." These six words changed my entire approach to product management.
The perfectionism paralysis.
Perfectionism is the silent killer of great ideas. It lurks in the shadows of every product team, whispering sweet nothings about how "just one more iteration" will make all the difference. Meanwhile, your competition has already launched three versions of a similar product and is gathering valuable customer feedback.
Sheryl Sandberg's mantra "Done is better than perfect" wasn't just clever Silicon Valley talk – it was the backbone of Facebook's evolution into a $117 billion empire. The philosophy acknowledges a brutal truth: in the relentless business world, the battle for relevance is won or lost on execution, not intention.
I once spent six weeks perfecting a feature that users barely noticed. My team had meticulously designed an elegant notification system with animations that would make Pixar animators weep with joy. Our customers' response? "Oh, I think I saw that. Can we talk about the login page instead?" Soul-crushing doesn't begin to describe it.
Why shipping actually matters.
The phrase "shipping is a feature" is commonly used among software engineers for good reason. It recognises that getting your product into users' hands isn't just a logistics exercise; it's a fundamental product attribute that delivers value.
When you ship, magical things happen. First, you start gathering feedback instead of making assumptions about what users want. Second, your team experiences the dopamine hit of completion, which fuels motivation for the next challenge. Third, you begin learning what actually matters, rather than what you think matters.
In our office, we've adopted a mantra borrowed from Agile methodology: "Think big, start small, learn fast". This approach acknowledges that the perfect solution rarely arrives fully formed like Athena from Zeus's forehead. Instead, it emerges through iteration and real-world testing.
When teams get stuck
in the perfection loop.
The psychology of shipping is fascinating. I've watched brilliant teams fall into the perfection death spiral, where morale deteriorates directly with how long a product remains unreleased. The longer something stays internal, the more people find it necessary to tweak, adjusting button colours until everyone wants to hurl their laptops into the River.
Last quarter, our team was deadlocked over a feature that half thought was ready to ship and half believed needed more work. The debate had grown toxic, with the "ship it" camp accusing the "perfect it" group of overthinking. Meanwhile, our sprint deadlines whooshed by like ignored speed limits.
We broke the stalemate by asking, "What's the worst that could happen if we ship now?" We listed actual consequences, not vague fears. Most were entirely manageable. For the few that weren't, we created specific mitigation plans. The clarity was liberating; we shipped that afternoon.
How to get to "done"
before everyone loses will to live.
Timeboxing is your friend. Setting a fixed time limit on tasks creates focus and prevents endless tinkering. When I say "You have two days to finalise this feature," it forces prioritisation of what truly matters.
Embrace the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach. An MVP focuses on the core problem your product solves, stripping away everything that isn't essential. This doesn't mean shipping garbage – it means shipping the smallest thing that delivers actual value.
Implement Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) practices. These processes automate testing and deployment, making shipping a regular habit rather than a dramatic event. When shipping happens daily or weekly instead of quarterly, the emotional stakes drop dramatically.
Finally, celebrate shipping as a team achievement. Our office has a ridiculous ritual where someone rings a small bell, and everyone briefly dances at their desks when we ship something significant. It's absurd, mildly embarrassing, and surprisingly effective at reinforcing the value of getting things done.
Liberation through shipping.
The most profound benefit of prioritising shipping is psychological. There's something deeply satisfying about releasing your creation into the wild, imperfect as it may be. As Erik Jacobsen advises software engineers, "Shipping is a feature" is the best advice he can give future engineers.
My twins recently made me a birthday card. It featured what I think was meant to be my face (though it looked more like a potato with glasses) and the words "Best Dad" spelt with an impressive disregard for conventional letter formation. It was gloriously imperfect and complete. They didn't hold onto it for weeks, tweaking the shading on my potato-face. They made it, decided it was done, and handed it over.
Perhaps there's wisdom in approaching our professional creations with the same confident finality. Ship it, learn from it, improve it. Repeat. Because perfection remains forever out of reach, done is something you can achieve before your will to live runs out entirely.
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