Taking a product from poor to good requires effort. For this, we need to validate customer pain points, validate the problem-solution fit, and find a model to monetize our solution. Taking a product from good to great requires a different level of effort. We need to find the best offering that can deliver the most impactful end-to-end experience and meet our key business outcomes. However, trying to take a product from great to perfect can be so hard that it actually slows us down. It's not due to lack of talent, time, or resources. It's mostly because no one knows what perfect is. Perfection sometimes is only an aspirational state. It exists only in our minds.
A typical situation that I have faced in many teams is where we depend on one person's final go-ahead before we release anything to production. This happens in spite of set processes in teams where scope had been agreed upon, designs had been iterated and finalized, and code had...