Shipping under pressure

A senior designer and a product manager discuss whether to release a new dashboard feature before it is fully polished.

Shipping under pressure

Listen and choose the right answer

Why does Laura want to ship the feature immediately?

• She hates working with Ben on design systems.
• Competitive pressure from rivals in Seattle is hurting their user acquisition.
• The engineering team is going on vacation tomorrow.

What is Ben's main concern about the current build?

• Visual bugs and low quality bar will cause craft debt and brand damage.
• The backend database is too slow for enterprise clients.
• The marketing campaign in London was cancelled.

Can they delay the release by two days?

• Yes, Ben convinced Laura to wait until next week.
• No, because the marketing campaign in London starts tomorrow.
• Yes, because management approved an extension.

What compromise do they finally reach?

• They cancel the feature entirely and redesign it from scratch.
• They ship on time, and Laura puts a promise for a follow-up polish sprint in writing.
• Ben pays for an external agency to fix the visual bugs.

Listen again and complete the sentences

• Laura: I know it's not perfect, Ben, but ____ from our rivals in Seattle is killing our user acquisition right now.
• Ben: Although the core logic works fine, the overall ____ is way too low for our enterprise clients.
• Laura: Whereas you want absolute ____ , I'm looking at our time-to-market and our quarterly business goals.
• Ben: It's not about perfectionism at all, it's about avoiding brand damage and massive ____ .
• Laura: We've got to ship and iterate rather than waiting another week for unnecessary ____ .

Sources: photo by Kindel Media on Pexels