Stop geeking over technology and ship the dang code!

One of our team, Lara, just sent me a link to a great article written by Joel Spolsky about programmers and shipping product called:
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The Duct Tape Programmer

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/09/23.html 
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It’s basically saying don’t worry too much about the polish on your code or getting it 100%, just ship it! I talk to other software co’s that get so wound up in perfecting technology that they never get their releases to the customers.

At ProWorkflow, of course we’re always trying to improve technology and programming – that’s just ongoing, but we do ship, and often! We roll out updates about every 1-2 weeks. They contain a mix of fixes and functionality, but the fact is they’re rolled out and the customers benefit.

All functionality updates are posted about on the blog here: http://www.proworkflowblog.com

Back to the the article though, there were a couple of paragraphs that really stood out.  Check out these:

“Yeah,” he says, “At the end of the day, ship the fucking thing! It’s great to rewrite your code and make it cleaner and by the third time it’ll actually be pretty. But that’s not the point—you’re not here to write code; you’re here to ship products.”

and…

“A 50%-good solution that people actually have solves more problems and survives longer than a 99% solution that nobody has because it’s in your lab where you’re endlessly polishing the damn thing. Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it.”

So true! Our Chairman reminds us of the latter on a regular basis. So Ship people, ship, ship, ship!

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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for:
ProActive Software, ProWorkflow, ProWorkflow Blog & Julian101
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Tags: Development, Joel on Software, Joel Spolsky, Programming, Release, Ship, Software