Are you familiar with jobs which never get completed?
Do you plan everything out meticulously, only to experience scope creep?
Are you constantly finding new issues or things to change in your project?
We can all relate to working on projects which just never complete on time.
Sometimes you get 75% of the way there and realise it’s not fit for purpose or you just don’t like what you see.
How do you avoid this and ensure things are completed on time?
At StudioRav we believe that getting it done is better than getting it perfect.
When you work with us our aim is to get your project completed and out there.
Of course we’ve got clients who work in vastly different ways.
What we find however is that the ones who claim they have ‘OCD’ and they need it to be ‘perfect’ are the ones most likely to delay and chop and change.
These clients are generally great people, but they suffer from 2 things:
i. They don’t know what they want – hence constantly chopping and changing their minds
ii. They are trying to achieve perfection, which means constantly trying to do more and more, losing track of deadlines and budgets.
If you feel you are stuck in a project like this there are some clear things you can do:
Prioritise things
So this means you concentrate on getting the most vital things done first.
These are typically things related to functionality or UX.
Anything and everything else can be graded in terms of importance which you can do in phase 2.
Say No
Sometimes it is important to manage client expectations and this can mean saying no.
Not everything needs to be done and not everything has been agreed.
Therefore you need to be able to focus on what brings value to the project.
If those things weren’t there in the original spec you need to ask why?
But you can ask that later – don’t waste time now.
Go Live!
Once the most important things have been done and tested, go live.
By deploying a project you enable users to give you real world feedback, which prior to that wouldn’t be possible.
It’s only by actually doing something that you know if it’s worth pursuing and putting more energy into.
Also, it’s a great feeling to see your hard work finally pay off.
Work in smaller increments
Breaking up projects into tasks or sprints means quicker updates.
Projects can still run whilst being steadily updated in the background.
This means less downtime and a faster turnaround for the user.
Continuous improvement
Finally, remember that no matter what you are doing – whether it’s a custom project or a website, you will always need to update and improve it.
Achieving perfection doesn’t mean you complete the project forever.
After it has gone live you still need to invest time and energy in keeping it up to date, adding new features and responding to user requests.
Therefore stick to simple and clear tasks and modules and grow your project bit by bit.
Contact us if you would like to discuss more and see how we can help you.
Further reading
https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/agile-delivery/agile-methodologies