Iteration: nothing is ever finished, so show the client early

I read a fantastic post today by Robin Sloan on snarmarket : ‘Iteration at Pixar’ – based on a speech by Pixar president Ed Catmull.

Ed Cat­mull insists nothing is ever finished.

Show your output early, and do not wait until you believe it is “finished”

So, resist polish and gold plating before you unveil it. I like this even more than the 80-20 rule (from the original Pareto principal) which encourages us to unveil after 20% of what effort it takes before “finishing” all aspects of a project.
Ed Catmull recommended that you must show your work, especially when it is not finished [and this was in a business context]. I like that a lot.

The longer you leave it, the more you set yourself up for disappointment

In most of the projects we are involved in now, an agile iterative approach is being adopted across the board. At the heart this is an approach based on iteration.
These are the main benefits, in my opinion, for taking an agile approach:

1. Valuable feedback: Your customer / client / audience can let you know whether they love it or hate it.
2. Efficiency: This approach ensures you waste as little time as possible on things that are not required, or on going in the wrong direction entirely.
3. Agility: this approach by its nature means you are able to change more quickly, should the need arise.
4. Enjoyment: Generally, people involved with projects that release their output early and regularly for the customer are happier; happier people do better work.
5. Outcome: At any one time, a project taking an iterative agile approach should be directly serving its customer need.

Get it out there and see what your client or audience or customer thinks early

Still, as Ed Catmull thinks, I agree the approach of showing your work/output early should be adopted wherever possible. So whether you are using Agile or not, showing the customer/client  early will help you in the end.

Now to put this into practice: I am off to show my wife the bookshelves in their early stages…