I was fortunate to be on a trading floor ten years ago when Pixar went public. What stands out for me about that day is carrot juice. Steve Jobs and the rest of the Pixar management were waiting in a conference room for the first trade when he became pretty upset that there was no carrot juice. Suddenly people were scurrying about trying to find carrot juice. I'm thinking to myself the guy's about to become a billionaire, and he's worried about carrot juice? Then I realized for Steve it's not about the money, it's about the details, it's about people doing their jobs and doing them right, it's about striving for perfection in every situation.
I recalled this about six months ago, as I sat in on a product development meeting. Two things that the product manager said really took me back:
- This release satisfies 80% of the new features and functionality that our customers want.
- The GUI's not perfect, but we'll deal with that later in an update.
I realized that the most important thing for the product manager was hitting the release date, which is important but so are the other details.
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