The paradox of good-enough

The pictured water flask is made in waxed leather, and it took me many hours over several months to get it finished. I had to make a wooden mould, shape the leather, decorate the leather, a lot of leather sewing, waxing, creating shoulder strap and so on. I still consider it worth the effort because I like how it turned out and I got to practice some crafts in the process.

But then again... Of course, a PET bottle worth 1 SEK had been good enough.

The agile good-enough

At work I hear the phrase good enough quite often. I have double feelings about this phrase, but I've also found my own solution.

Yes, I understand that an organization is reluctant to have its staff over-work anything. There's a logic argument that efficiency is at peak while always producing just enough and then moving on. However, there's a risk this also become a mind-numbing environment for any creative individual with high ambition. It feels good putting so much effort into something that you are making yourself proud of something, and it's in the striving for greatness we push ourselves and allow ourself to be learning by doing.

The two different kinds of good-enough

There are two kinds of good-enough. One would be the MVP concept, making a product with minimal feature set from prioritized list of features first to prove the product get to use before expanding the functionality. However, many new products replace existing solutions, and the initial MVP will most likely be way worse than the existing solution it's replacing anyway - pushing the agenda of getting a lot more features in before release and start of income flow.

This push for swift feature implementation under the cover of good enough also hides a push for technical depth and any developer with a bit of self-esteem will eventually slowly witter into a bitter old code monger. A good developer take pride in creating well-structured and solid software. Rushing implementation by leaving user story implementation before it's thoroughly harndened and the code surrounding the change is refactored according to the change will leave a hollow heart in these people.

Pushing for perfection is the best way to learn and to feel pride. This is deprived in the second type of good-enough.

My solution to allow for personal growth and well-being

There are several ways of making room for personal growth even in this manner. Personally, I engage myself in open-source software on my free time - as a hobby. I'm lucky enough to be in a phase of life where I can find the spare time to evolve my coding skills in an environment where the rush is low and really good software is appreciated. I have little knowledge of what others do to cope.

And I also indulge in ancient crafts, but that's another matter.

What's your coping mechanism to evolve in spite of the pressure of good enough?

By the way, if you want to check out the process of making a waxed water bottle, I took some pictures and made a description along the way. You may find it here: Creating a leather water flask.