Good Enough Archives - Page 2 of 5

Gold Plating

Project managers have a name for giving a customer more than the plan calls for. They call it gold plating. Wikipedia sums up the standard project management guide, the PMBOK, this way: gold plating “means the addition of any feature not considered in the original scope plan.”

In 2002 PM Network, the magazine of the Project Management Institute, discussed the practice. It wrote that giving the customer extras, such as bonus functions or better components, “usually is frowned upon in project management circles.” It quoted an exam guide by Rita Mulcahy: “Often such additions are included based on the project team’s impression of what the customer would like.”

The same article questioned the rule. Its subtitle reads: “A certain amount of ‘gold-plating’ in software development projects actually may produce more satisfied customers.”

The First iPhone Had No Apps

The first iPhone went on sale on June 29, 2007. It had no App Store. Users could not copy and paste text. In October 2007 Steve Jobs wrote: “Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone.”

The App Store opened in July 2008. In its first weekend, users downloaded more than 10 million applications. Copy and paste arrived with iPhone OS 3.0 on June 17, 2009. When Apple announced it in March, the TechCrunch headline read: “iPhone to finally get cut and paste.”

With All Its Faults

On September 17, 1787, the last day of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin brought a written speech. James Wilson read it for him. Franklin began with an admission: “I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve.” Then he said: “I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such.”

He explained why. “I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution.” He asked each delegate who still had objections to “doubt a little of his own infallibility” and sign.

Of his own doubts he said: “The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good.”

Craigslist

Craig Newmark founded Craigslist in 1995. In 2017 The Ringer described it as a basic HTML website that rivals saw as “an outdated mess of hyperlinks.” Its mobile app came out only in 2019.

In 2022 a reporter asked Newmark why the site still looks the same. “Because that serves people better,” he said. “I’ve learned that people want stuff that is simple and fast and gets the job done.” The Ringer estimated the company’s revenue at $690 million for 2016. The company had about 50 employees.

The Little Shop of Horrors

In December 1959 Roger Corman shot the interiors of The Little Shop of Horrors in two days, on a standing set at the old Chaplin Studios. The actors were hired for one week, three days of rehearsal and two of shooting. Exterior scenes took four more evenings. The film cost less than $30,000 and earned back its cost.

Corman titled his memoir How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime. “I had never thought of myself as doing Great Art,” he said. “I felt I was working as a craftsman.” Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese worked for him early in their careers. In 2009 he received an honorary Academy Award.

Maximizers and Satisficers

In 2002 the Swarthmore psychologist Barry Schwartz and five colleagues published a study of “maximizers,” who look for the best option, and “satisficers,” who stop at good enough. Across seven samples they found “negative correlations between maximization and happiness” and “positive correlations between maximization and depression.” In one study, maximizers were “more sensitive to regret.”

In his book The Paradox of Choice, Schwartz wrote: “To satisfice is to settle for something that is good enough …” In a 2014 Reddit Q&A, he gave short advice: “‘Good enough’ is almost always good enough.” The Atlantic quoted it in 2015.

The Good Enough Revolution

In 2009 Wired magazine published “The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine.” It opened with the Flip Ultra video camera. The Flip was “stripped-down” and cost $150. A midpriced Sony camcorder cost $800. The Flip sold more than a million units in its first year. By 2009 it held 17 percent of the U.S. camcorder market.

The writer, Robert Capps, argued that buyers now valued three things: “ease of use, continuous availability, and low price.” To get them, “they’ll happily sacrifice power and features.”

Good Enough Quality

In 1997 the software tester James Bach published “Good Enough Quality: Beyond the Buzzword” in the magazine Computer. To call something good enough, he wrote, you must agree with four claims. The first three are “It has sufficient benefits,” “It has no critical problems,” and “The benefits sufficiently outweigh the problems.” The fourth is “In the present situation, and all things considered, further improvement would be more harmful than helpful.”

Bach rejected the idea of “the minimum quality that you can get away with.” He wrote: “Good Enough has nothing to do with mediocrity.” His example was Microsoft, which “knows how to ship with the right bugs.” Bach’s testing company is called Satisfice, Inc.

Worse Is Better

In a section of an essay first written in 1989, the software designer Richard P. Gabriel described two ways to design. One aims for “the right thing.” The other he called “worse is better,” and he used early Unix and the C language as examples. In that approach, “It is slightly better to be simple than correct.” Another rule is: “Completeness can be sacrificed in favor of any other quality.”

Gabriel argued that the simpler approach “has better survival characteristics.” He concluded: “It is better to get half of the right thing available so that it spreads like a virus.” The essay spread among programmers from 1991. In 2000 Gabriel answered himself under a pen name, in an essay called “Worse Is Better Is Worse.”