Steven Hansen admits the current All Blacks set-up is still a work in progress midway through the 2017 season.
The All Blacks head into Saturday night's test against the Springboks three points ahead on the Rugby Championship standings following three straight wins over Australia and Argentina.
However on the back of a drawn series against the British and Irish Lions in June with a drawn test series, including a second test defeat in Wellington, and a scratchy first half last week, Hansen says the team is not the finished product.
Hansen said the All Blacks coaching staff want the team to be a triple threat across the park but haven't reached that standard yet in 2017.
"It's about moulding and folding our game so we get to the point we can play a triple threat game eventually to the standard that we want to. It's not the finished product by any stretch of the imagination but it's well under control from a planning point of view," told allblacks.com after naming his side for Saturday's test against South Africa.
"We need the games we're getting at the moment to make us better, otherwise we're not going to grow. So, a challenge is good for us at the moment."
Hansen admits almost everything went right for the All Blacks in 2016 and believes opponents took his side lightly last season following the big-named retirements at the last World Cup.
Despite Richie McCaw, Dan Carter, Ma'a Nonu, Conrad Smith, Keven Mealamu and Tony Woodcock all finishing their international careers following the 2015 Rugby World Cup, the All Blacks still managed to win 13 from 14 tests with the only defeat coming against Ireland in Chicago.
"We've had a little bit of adversity this year. We've come off a season where everything went right for us, apart from Chicago, and it was easy last year because we wanted to re-establish ourselves as a team," Hansen
"I think the opposition took us a little lightly because the fact we'd lost all the legends.
"Now that I think there's a greater respect from the opposition, there's subtle changes in the game that we're having to adjust to, we're making some deliberate decisions about how we want to play and that's putting us under a bit of pressure at times."
The All Blacks won by an average margin of 24 points last year including two big victories over Saturday's opponents South Africa in which New Zealand scored 15 tries.
