Good Enough Quality: Beyond the Buzzword

• Authors: James Bach
• Venue: Computer
• Year: 1997

The big new force that is propelling the good enough idea is the explosion of market-driven software. With a passion roughly proportional to the price of Microsoft stock, companies are looking for the shortest path to better software, faster, and cheaper. They are willing to take risks, and they have little patience for the traditional moralistic arguments in favor of so-called good practices. Much of the traditional lore of software project management seems irrelevant or stilted when applied to market-driven projects. It's time that we developed approaches and methodologies that apply to the whole craft, not just to space missions, medical devices, or academic experiments. Good enough is a model that encompasses high-reliability products as well as high-entertainment products. Whether you call the idea good enough, or choose another buzzword like economical, pragmatic, or utilitarian, the basic idea remains the same: our behavior should be guided by reason, not compulsion. Beyond the notion of best practices is a more fundamental idea: best thinking. As the good enough idea continues to emerge, the quality of one's thinking, rather than conformance to formalities, will become the issue. Formalities, and the authority behind them, will be re-examined. No wonder so many authorities consider good enough to be a dangerous idea