Finishing

There are plenty of hurdles that you have to make in order to be successful.  Perhaps the most critical is taking something all the way to completion.  When you are not working with a team this is a deceptively difficult thing to do.

It takes determination, momentum and accountability to start a project and see it through to the end and beyond.  Many times you will hit on things that seem insurmountable or mind numbingly tedious.

When I launched the iPhone apps that I’ve worked on the struggles all add up. All the aspects to each project needs to be completed and to an acceptable standard.

• Software development
• Graphics
• Sound FX and Music
• business registration
• iTunes accounts
• bank accounts
• certificates, signing, provisioning processes
• marketing graphics, app descriptions
• webpages, support forms
• backend
• testing and Quality Assurance
• App Submission
• ongoing marketing
• iteration and improvements

If just one of these presents a hurdle you cannot overcome by either doing the work yourself or delegating to someone who can then your project is likely doomed to fail. Like the links in a chain only one link needs to break for the chain to fail.

That is why finishing is so hard.

Projects start with the best of intentions, fantastic ideas and a solid plan and can still be derailed by a hiccup.

The Agile approach of daily stand up meetings is supposed to prevent stoppages from lasting too long.  Eventually someone says: “I can’t continue until X is complete.” This is an indicator that someone in charge needs to take action quickly to keep the work progressing.

When you’re working on your own it becomes incredibly difficult to self diagnose these situations and push through.

That’s why I have tremendous respect for anyone who finishes a project on their own.