Question: What is your main priority in your work and what is the most important aspect of your work?

Rik Allen answered on 8 Mar 2015:

Hi.
For me, I really believe in not letting the customer down. It’s very complicated to work out exactly how long something is going to take to make, especially when it might involve a team of twenty for two years, but businesses need to know they will get roughly what they expect in time. I hate to be late, or deliver something buggy. It might not matter so much whether it does everything they might like it to do, but what it does do has to be done well, and when they need it.

The problem is that the projects are so big that the project changes over that much time – after a year of waiting for something you need, you discover that whatever it is needs to be a bit smaller than you thought, and perhaps you can afford it to cost a bit more (which is unusual), but it also has to be red instead of green.
The ability to change direction so that what we are doing from one week to the next fits what the customer wants is probably the most important thing I’ve learnt in the last few years. Trying to make sure that whatever we are doing each week is valuable, and as soon as possible we aim to give the customer a first version so they can see if they can use it for what they wanted, then listen as they tell us what to change.

That is not a great answer, but I hope it helps. Do what you can quickly first, then make it better until it is good enough.