Decaying Excellence

To: All Team
Subject: Kickoff Notes

Guiding principles we agreed to:

  • We recognize that achieving 100% perfection is impossible.
  • We will aim for excellence, and we will hold ourselves to high standards: our target is 90% of perfect.



To: All Team
Subject: Reminder of our guiding principles

We have been at this for a while, perfection is impossible, our target is 90% of perfect. Stop trying to be perfect, we need to get this done.



To: All Team
Subject: Urgent reminder – Perfection is impossible

Finish this thing. 90% is good enough.



To: All Team
Subject: Post Launch Review Notes

Achievement 73%
Root cause: 90% x 90% x 90% = 73%