Many times when discussing Product Management, we are faced with the following question:
How do we know if our product is ready?
How do we know if our product reached the "correct" level of quality?
What we usually hear/read are "blanket" statements like "it has to be good enough" (what does "good enough" mean? how do we measure "good enough"?), or "don't compromise on quality" (practically - what should we do? ship when we have zero bugs? and then, if we reached it? we might find a bug the next moment... for how long should we wait with zero bugs before releasing?).
Part of the problem is that there are no objective measures for quality or severity of bugs, and how they impact the users of the product.
Another part is that product teams find it hard to be objective, as they really want to ship (which is a good thing...). The team has worked hard and for a long time to make this product breakthrough, this innovation, and really wants to finally ship - and see the impact. Yet now, the shipping date gets pushed further and further as bugs accumulate and the team toils to crush them and to reach the "shippable level" quality for the product.
As the quotes go "It's easier to make a breakthrough then to follow through.", or "Innovation is 1% Inspiration and 99% Perspiration.". And the perspiration phase is long and frustrating.
And yet. The product has to be "good enough".
Leading to the question we started with: How do we know if our product is ready?
I'd like to claim this same subjectivity can be used to our advantage (more accurately, to help assess the product's quality). Our emotional involvement with our product can be used to shape an opinion about it's quality-level.
How?
Well, when I'm asked "how can we know if our product is ready?" (quality-wise, not feature-wise), my first answer is always the same:
You know if it's good enough. Be honest with yourselves. Would you be proud to let your family/friends/significant-other use the product at its current quality-level?
I believe that when we need to make the quality-call, deciding whether the product is good enough, we can ask ourselves - would we proudly let our friends-and-family use the product? Would we let them invest (their money, their time) in it?
If we answer "no, not yet", then the product is simply not ready. No matter what our graphs and dashboards tell us.
And if we feel the product is ready to be shown off to people we really care about their input - then our product quite possibly reached a level of quality allowing us to ship it.
The very same subjectivity which typically masks the correct answer regarding product quality, can be used to help us prepare a simple yes/no ready-or-not measure regarding the product quality.
Would you be proud to let your family/friends/significant-other use your product at the current quality level?
Ask yourself. Be honest about the answer. Be honest about the implications.
NOTE: This is not instead of standard quality control measures. This is to augment them, and the battle the subjectivity of the human factor assigning importance to specific issues and overall grades.
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