Often failure to launch is because the project was to rushed! Often projects come to us and they have to be done at break neck speed, so the owners say. The reason can some times be a perceived deadline for a product launch, simply loosing face if it doesn’t launch when they said it would or a real world make or break business ending deadline or opportunity.
Consequently everything is rushed and pushed to the brink. Everyone is working all night 7 days a week. Even though corners aren’t meant to be cut, they are. That extra run of tests just doesn’t get done. Or that important feature is totally forgotten about, until the last minute. Then for some reason perfection doesn’t happen?
Let us decompress some of what usual goes on.
This is why you’ll project will launch like an early flying machine!
Take a deep breath. Re-assess your deadlines and give yourself and the people working on the task some breaking room to work their magic. It doesn’t matter if you have the best coders, designers, SEO wizard and marketeers in town. If you are working them night and day in a frenzy shits gunna happen. So listen to your body and your staff a pull back a bit on the reins and make sure everything is getting done correctly.
Take some time and organise everything that’s left to be done, by checking where you really are at currently.
Then realistically create a check list and timeline. Now take a little bit of time off that and continue and check again. (I say take a little time off because you still need to finish fast after all)
Repeat the process everyday and adjust it accordingly. If your miles off your launch date change it. The only thing worst than being late is turning up with something half ass’d and broken. Give your team the time and space to get it right.
Make sure your have your; Marketing, SEO, debugging right for launch. I’m not saying case perfection for ever because that’s even worse in my book. However you should be pretty confident everything is covered on launch day and from there you should have a plan to handle an bumps in the road.
There will be bumps in the road after launch! This is another reason to break your staff getting to launch. It won’t be the end, just another chapter likely harder than the first. So make sure as part of your launch you have plans in place for after the launch.
If you loose potential clients because you need more time don’t worry about it. Anyone you loose will likely coming running back if you get it right. If they don’t you’ll find someone else. After all does your business model really rely on one person and if so you shouldn’t have started it in the first place.
