Don't get me wrong. You need to have a good product. Your product can't be awful but it only needs to be about 80% as good as the competition before you can win in marketing and other ways.
World class customer service by itself can be a market beater, even when the product you are backing up is more expensive / lower quality for the same feature set. People like to know that when they have problems, they'll get answers quickly.
"It's the best but it still hasn't launched"
"It's the best but documentation is bad and nobody knows how to use it effectively"
"It's the best but has no support option"
Nothing is ever really new in software development or IT. Today, sure, people are like "Fred who?" but as surely as virtual machine wax and wane, someday a generation will arise, for awhile, having read Brooks and his timeless observations on software development. Maybe I should quit my job and write book introductions professionally?
I'm not sure if there is a legal copy out there on the net, but here's its wikipedia page anyway. Hurry, or the deletionists will get it.
You often procrastinate by overthinking and overplanning when the best approach to check off that item on the to-do list is to just do it.
silver bullet == not acting in hopes to eventually come up with a magical solution
lead bullet == the solution is dull but obvious, you just do it
I think the bullet part of the metaphor has more to do with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_bullet_%28medicine%29 than with Fred Brooks, the Lone Ranger, or werewolves.
