What it Really Takes to Ship

There are many many qualities, attributes and skills required to ship something. That is to say, to get something you have created out into a mostly uncaring and indifferent world.

But ultimately it all comes down to being able to say "No,".

• No to finishing off those features that have taken too long.
• No to adding more features.
• No to more polishing.
• No to writing more documentation.
• No to cleaning up your code.
• No to more QA and testing.
• No to better copy on your website.
• No to more design tweaks.
• No to more analytics.
• No to fixing some bugs.
• No to your sense of avoiding embarrassment.
• No to your fear of poor reviews, of being ignored and laughed at.

Even in organisations driven by wildly undisciplined development practices (constant feature creep, poorly thought out and specced out features, unwillingness to nail down a spec or even a short iteration cycle), eventually someone with The Authority will say No to more development.

Budget is up.

Time is up.

Time to Ship or Die.

...or to Ship And Die.

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What kind of state you, your product, and your team will be in when you are forced to ship will be down to how your project has been run and executed prior to the SHIP DATE.

But that is a whole other story.