The longer you take, the longer it will take

The longer you take, the longer it will take

It may sound like a tautology, but the longer you take to complete a project, the longer it's going to take to complete it. Put another way, every day you add to the final launch of the project increases the odds that you'll add even more days to the project.

For example, suppose you're launching a new AMS and you set the go-live for six months from today. As you approach go-live, you decide there are a few more things you'd like to have before go-live, and so you push the go-live out another month.

One unintended consequence of pushing the date later is that the team working on the project starts to lose focus. And the longer the project goes, the more they lose focus, and the longer the project takes. It becomes a self-feeding cycle.

The key is to focus on a minimum viable product (MVP) and to get live as quickly as possible. What's the bare minimum that we need to go live? That's our target!

Because the longer you take to complete the project, the longer it will take to complete it.

Wes's Wednesday Wisdom Archives

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