Release Ready
I mentioned that Sign Off Judgment in the last post and I want to explain what I meant. This skill is knowing when ready to release the deliverable; it is knowing what done looks like. The basic issue is that what release ready looks like is at a whole different level from school work. In school you are producing work for a teacher who knows what you know and probably quite a bit more than you.
Therefore, they can fill in any missing gaps in your work. You do get a grade on how much they fill in but you are still “done” with that task. You could even turn in nothing and you would be “done”.
In industry the situation is completely different. When you sign off on a document and release it you are certifying that is is complete and accurate. Many times you have much more knowledge about the topic than the person you are producing the work for and it is not their job to fill any missing gaps and wastes their time if they have to. 
So the level of “doneness” you need to produce is much higher then for homework assignments. Recognizing the finish point is further complicated by the fact that different people will have different requirements for the deliverables you give them. So how can you develop this skill.
Sign Off Judgement
There is no hard and fast rule to learning when a deliverable are release ready but there are a number of things you can do to speed up acquisition of this skill. To begin with make sure that the deliverables match all the guidelines. Then think about what it would be like to find information in the document or use it. You can make any document easier to use just as you would make a design easy to use. This also means consider who will be using your deliverable and what their knowledge is. After go through a well defined review and release process to catch errors.
Feedback
Finally there is a check you can use to see how close you got. After you pass on your deliverable, see if there are any questions about it or if you have to correct anything. If they do have questions, then the work was not finished. Take that feedback and apply it the next time you have to make that deliverable. If they do not have questions, then you have succeeded and have produced work that can be used seamlessly.
Connecting Concepts
This leads to many more important concepts. The first is what guidelines do are there? Don’t know? Find out. Then how do you figure out your audience? Defining who you are producing work for helps a lot in defining what done should like. Also what does a review and release process look like? Finally, if you do get feedback on a deliverable how do you respond? How do you update your work to reflect that feedback. We will get into each of these concepts in future posts so stay tuned 🙂
Program
The Engineer Accelerator Program gives students direct practice in learning all these concepts and how to recognize the true finish point. Deliverables for the hardware project are due each week and they are checked for doneness. If they are not done then each student receives individualized feedback and they must update their work. Ultimately, all deliverables are due at the end of session design review where they are assessed and certificates are given. To learn this skill and more apply for the next session! Enrollment is open.
If you have questions or comments join our Slack community and ask away 🙂