Is it Good Enough?

The other day, the Ministry of Testing tweeted this:

Great question from Cassandra: "Could you share any tips on how to let go of that idea of personal perfection, when part of our job as testers is to aim for perfection?". Is this something you have advice on?

I've certainly had this conversation with testers in the past but I've had it with teams from other disciplines that I've managed too. This was the answer I gave to the tweet:

Reframe 'success' from being the pursuit of perfection to something like getting a good solution at the right time for a reasonable cost.

'Good', 'right', and 'reasonable' are context-dependent and stakeholders should be able to guide the team on what they mean and when.

The more general version is that I've found that people with skills in a particular area can tend to feel compromised if they haven't utilised their skills to fullest possible extent on a piece of work. This is especially true if they align their role with those skills, such as a tester and testing, a technical author and writing, or a developer and the production of code.

I have been here myself: I might not be walking around with a bag of chisels, covered in sawdust but I can be precious about what I see as a craft, as my craft.

The more general reframing that I have found helpful is this: A working definition of a good job is the one that helps the project to achieve its goals. Your perfect result is unhelpful if it delays the project so that a market opportunity is missed, or if its pursuit puts you under immense pressure and unbearable stress.

Try to see your role as exercising your skills, your judgement, and, yes, your craft to facilitate the successful outcome of the project, given what you know, at this time. How can you find the right compromise given all the constraints in play? How can your expertise and experience find a productive path through the space of all possible options to a reasonable outcome without breaking the bank?

Having said that, you are part of the context and I recommend that you try to find, in every project, something that is satisfying for you. Sometimes it'll be using a new tool, or working in a new area, or collaborating with someone you've never worked with before. Sometimes it'll be inventing an approach which cuts corners in the right places, or doing analysis to inform the appropriate compromise, or proposing alternative ideas to the stakeholders that you believe achieves their aims in a different way.

"Perfect is the enemy of good" they say. Perfect is the enemy of good enough is more where I'm coming from. That's not to say I'm looking to do the bare minimum, more that the pleasure of the role, the game if you like, is in using our knowledge and craft to understand what standard is required by the relevant set of people this time around and then achieving it at the right cost.

Image: https://flic.kr/p/9rUch

Comments

Unknown said…

I completely agree, and the problem is that there's often indirection involved. So, if I spend too long on this thing (going beyond good enough to perfect) it might not be that the project is immediately affected. However, the next task in the project is affected - is that rushed as a result (i.e. not even good enough), or is the project delayed as a result of this second task being completed to either good enough or perfection?

I guess it comes down to opportunity cost. The time I spend taking this from good enough to perfection - is that better spent elsewhere? If not, then go for it.

May 17, 2020 at 3:11 PM

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