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.