“You will frequently hear the claim that software engineering is facing a quality crisis of some sort. I don’t happen to agree with that claim—the computer software most people use most of the time is of ridiculously high quality compared to everything else in their lives—but that’s beside the point. This claim about the “quality crisis” leads to a lot of proposals and research about making higher quality software. And at this point, the world divides into the geeks and the suits.

The geeks want to solve the problem automatically, using software. They propose things like unit tests, test driven development, automated testing, dynamic logic and other ways to “prove” that a program is bug-free.

The suits aren’t really aware of the problem. They couldn’t care less if the software is buggy, as long as people are buying it.”

This geeks-vs-suits battle is played out in almost every business, big or small. The smaller the business - the more likely the debate turns into a schizophrenic dialog inside one poor guy’s head:

The angel on one shoulder tells him to never sell out - that craftsmanship and quality should never be sacrificed just to make a quick buck. The angel gets up on a soapbox and preaches about the evils of money-grubbing big business - how they don’t care about the customer and how their product sucks because they cut corners to save money, etc, etc.

Then the devil on the other shoulder reminds him that he has a mortgage payment due in two days.

It’s not the gap between “product quality” and “revenue” I want to talk about - I think this debate is actually pretty healthy. There is a gap far more dangerous to a small business: the gap between quality and perfection.

You see, small businesses can rarely afford the luxury of perfectionism - in fact, unchecked perfectionism will usually transform your business from “small” into “small-er” or “out of”. In the early days of Infusion, we had to constantly battle perfectionism. It crept in from all aspects of our business: product development, marketing, sales, accounting. These are a few of my observations:

1. There are three situations where perfectionism hits: when you’re performing your craft (whatever it may be), any time you have to write something, and when you have to make a decision. Case in point: I should have been done writing this an hour ago!
2. Perfectionism working alone = bad = expensive
3. Strict deadlines and accountability combat perfectionism better than anything.
4. It is absolutely critical that you recognize the “good enough” point. Anything beyond “good enough” gets more and more expensive the more time you throw at it.
5. Don’t confuse quality with perfection. There’s a BIG difference. And don’t fight perfectionism so hard you lose quality. That’s an equally devastating mistake

And if all that isn’t enough to get you to shed you perfectionist tendencies, check out a study that showed perfectionists to be more “anxious, neurotic, and exhausted”.

And this post is officially “good enough”.