Bill Canady argues shipping an imperfect product Friday beats waiting a month for perfection. He outlines a quad map: split your portfolio into core and tail segments, then plot every transaction on a matrix by revenue and profit percentage. The resulting index card becomes your organization's most valuable decision tool.
You'd rather have it ugly on Friday than beautiful in a month. Sort products into a core and a tail and let the operator make that call, not a spreadsheet, because core is a judgment about where your business is built to do, not a percentile. Then put every transaction in its box and total the 4 boxes on 2 dimensions, right? Percentage of revenue and percentage of profit. That's the deliverable. 4 boxes, 2 numbers each, fixed on an index card. Simple. Not always easy to get it, but you can do it, and it will be the most valuable index card in the building.
