Devdelivery's Blog

The whole purpose of software development is to deliver working software, so I am continually amazed how many people in the process do not want to deliver.

• QA complains about every little bug
• UAT complains about every little bug
• Customer complains about needing training

Apparently anything less than perfect software is not acceptable by these folks.

Sorry, guys. Perfect is going to take awhile. In the meantime, why don’t you take this release which is miles better than the previous?

Perfect is the enemy of the good. Often the cost-benefit of perfect shows that it is not worth it. Spending days of programmer time to save some admins a couple of seconds is value destroying.

Even if you spent the time to get to perfect, you will find that the definition of perfect has changed. Look at Microsoft Word – 15 years in development comprising hundreds, if not thousands, of programmer-years and still not perfect. Of course, the current version would have been seen as spectacular 15 years ago, but today people still find things to complain about. 

Duke Nukem Forever fell into this trap – trying to be the perfect game when the definition of the perfect game constantly moved.

The criteria should be, is this release a step forward or a step back? If it is forward progress, then deliver!