'Ship Fast and Iterate' Doesn't Mean Start With a Poor Product Never compromise quality to meet a deadline and never miss a deadline. Nobody said business is easy.

By Vikas Lalwani

entrepreneur daily

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

shutterstock

Has your manager or client ever asked you to finish a work and ship it fast? Even before you have properly understood what is the scope of the task or what are all the sub-tasks involved?

Sure, we all believe in the mantra - "ship fast and iterate." It doesn't matter if you are a developer or a designer or a marketer, the world just seems to be in a hurry of getting things live. But wait a minute and think what you are doing.

Are you shipping a quality product? Or just shipping something half baked in the name of shipping fast?

Shipping fast matters, but more important than shipping things fast is shipping quality products.

Related: Iterate or Eliminate? When You Need to Go Back to the Drawing Board.

Your product may vary depending on your responsibilities. If you are a marketer, your product can be a landing page or an email template for your next campaign. If you are a designer, your product can be the new web page that you are working on or a new icon you are creating. Whatever your product is, you are the owner and it is your responsibility to maintain its quality. Never compromise on it in the name of "shipping fast."

But this approach has a side effect. Whenever I have told this to people, they start using this as an excuse and take forever to ship. This is the other extreme of this story. Delivering quality products should not be your excuse to move slowly. Push yourself and your teammates to move fast and go the extra mile to meet the deadline. Get the job done on time.

If you lower the bar once, it becomes very difficult to raise it again. There are hundreds of tasks fighting for your attention and there is a good probability that you are not going to come back to improve what you've shipped. But of course there are exceptions and you've to make the call what works in your circumstance.

Related: 5 Easy Ways to Lose Customers (Infographic)

Am I the only one who feels this way?

I felt I cannot be the first one to feel this pain. There must be many before me who must have felt this way. So I searched and came across this paragraph in Sam Altman's blog post about super successful companies (Sam Altman is president of Y Combinator):

"They (super successful startups) are obsessed with the quality of the product/experience. Almost a little too obsessed—they spend a lot of time on details that at first glance wouldn't seem to be really important. The founders of these companies react as if they feel physical pain when something isn't quite right with the product or a user has a bad customer support experience. Although they believe in launching early and iterating, they generally won't release something crappy. (This is not an excuse to launch slowly. You're probably taking too long to launch.)"

I hope this sums it up well. Balance is the key here. Strive hard to maintain a balance between product quality and shipping fast. Your product will improve over time if you listen to your users and keep on iterating, but it's you who has to make a conscious decision to never ship an inferior product.

Related: How to Test Whether You're Ready to Dive into Your Startup, Full Time

Vikas Lalwani

Marketing Analyst

Vikas Lalwani is a member of the marketing team at FusionCharts, a startup providing JavaScript charts to 23,000+ customers. He is also community manager at Zidisha, a Y Combinator backed non-profit helping entrepreneurs in developing countries. You can catch him on Twitter via @LalwaniVikas

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.

Editor's Pick

Side Hustle

I Started a Semi-Passive Side Hustle That Earns $33,000 a Week on Amazon: 'Selling There Is a No-Brainer'

Dr. Jenny Woo wanted to create a product that would help people connect, and it turned out to be a lucrative one.

Marketing

How Augmented Reality Is Transforming the Marketing Landscape — and How Your Business Can Leverage It Effectively

How can physical goods be endowed with digital content? What is phygital marketing, and why will everyone be involved in it in the next five years? Here's what you need to know.

Business News

X Is Losing Users and Struggling to Attract Creators, According to New Data

The company, which is owned by Elon Musk, says that 1.7 million people join the platform every day.

Science & Technology

Why You Should Incorporate AI into Your Business — and How to Do It the Right Way

The proliferation of generative AI tools has made the technology ever more accessible and relevant. Here's how you can apply it to your business as well.

Money & Finance

You Might Spend Unnecessary Money If You Don't Stay on Top of Your Expenses. Here's How to Manage Them.

Nothing makes paying taxes even more onerous — or gets in the way of a firm understanding of how a business is performing — than ineffective expense management. Use these five expense management tips to not merely survive as a business, but thrive.