Lately, I have been trying to take some of my part-time projects and clean them up into nice, releasable apps. The part I struggle with the most is the finishing touches that is needed to bring it home, the icing on the cake.
It typically goes like this
I get an idea for an app that I want to build. I get excited, plan it out, code it up, go through a couple of revisions and then… it starts to plateau. I get the feeling like, “Yeah, it’s pretty much done” but it seems no matter how much I work at it, it just stays 99% complete.
Why?
- The honey moon is over. The initial excitement of the project fades down a bit.
- The cool things I wanted to do in the project are done first, leaving only the meh parts for the end.
- Features keep piling up. I keep adding features rather than polish up and push out a finished version.
- The code gets more complex later in the project.
- The last remaining details add up. May seem like small changes but as I continue to work at it, I keep finding more to do. Maybe it was more than 1% after all.