Software People Inspiring

From Where We're Standing, "Perfect" And "Good Enough" Are The Same Destination

This morning, I heard another tale of woe from a developer working a company that had hired a "quality manager" who goes around warning developers not to overdo software quality.

Demotivational posters have gone up with slogans like "Perfection is the enemy of Good Enough".

I make this point often, but I guess I'll just have to keep making it: for more than 99% of teams, there is no immediate danger of making their software too good.

Indeed, so far are the majority of teams from even nearing perfection, that - from their vantage point - Perfect and Good Enough are effectively the same destination.

Imagine the quality of your software is Miami, Florida. And let's imagine that Perfection for your software is Manhattan, New York.

"Good Enough" would probably be somewhere around Brooklyn, NY. That is to say, if you're in Miami, Florida, the answers to the questions "How do I get to Manhattan?" and "How do I get to Brooklyn?" are essentially the same.

Fear not perfect software. Just because you aim for it, it doesn't meet it will ever happen. But, for the vast bulk of development teams, falling just short of it could well put them where they need to be.

So, here's my demotivational poster about quality:

Aim for perfection, because Good Enough is on the way

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