Polishing Takes Time so Polish What Users Will See Most

Anna was screaming at the top of her lungs.

Her devs had been wasting time building stupid functionality.

It wasn't even in the plan! Now they don't have time to finish the features. They're out of time and should already be shipping!

Idiots.

Furious is a very weak word. They could've built that stuff later after shipping, now they've got nothing to ship!

The Famous Carpenting Quote

Ok, I made that up. But it's just what happens when you don't prioritize correctly (except for the screaming part, I hope.)

This post is about a famous Steve Jobs quote on carpeting of all things.

He was a fantastic product person. I'm writing this using a device that wouldn't exist without him. However, this quote is terrible advice for something as flexible as software development!

Here's the quote:

When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You'll know it's there, so you're going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.

-- Steve Jobs

Please don't polish what users won't see!

That leaves you less time to polish what they will see.

Why is it terrible advice? For two reasons:

First, the currency is time and time is finite. Polishing takes time. Spending time to improve what won't be seen is time that you can't spend to improve the important bits.

Second, you learn as you build. The more you iterate the more you learn about what you're building, and the better the end result will be. You never know what is the best product when you start, you learn that as you go along. Perfecting things too early only locks you into a subpar product.

What should you do instead?

Simple. Use "plywood" everywhere. Software is easy to change to replace things with "wood" as you go along and see the need. Here plywood is code for building something simple and wood is code for polishing it.

This way you can spend time polishing after you know for sure it's worth it.

So go simple. Iterate and improve. This will give you the best product.