Institutionalizing Good Enough
July 26, 2018
The question is, “When is it a good time to fix bugs?” The answer is, “Not too often.” The reason, as I learned from an alleged whiz kid who was speaking at one of the German tech conferences, was, “Software just has to be good enough.”
I was on the program too, but I was advocating an opinion less popular than a lecture about sediments in the Ruhr Valley in 1615.
As it turns out, the whiz kid is absolutely correct. Try and search YouTube for live streams about the Hawaii volcano. How’s that working out for you? Need to locate the phone number of person in your neighborhood via Bing? Let me know if you too long for the long gone white pages directory. Need information from a Russian blog? Give Qwant.com a whirl. Helpful, right?
I read “Not All Bugs Are Worth Fixing and That’s Okay.”
That’s a special title. We have the “all” word. A categorical affirmative. Logical. I also like the psychbabbley “That’s Okay.”
Good. I’m okay. You’re okay.
The write up explains that flaws are not really a problem. Maybe a missile guidance system has a glitch and takes out a primary school. Hey, no biggie.
I learned:
You may feel a strong pull to fix every software bug in your application. This is almost always a bad idea.
Obviously the children at the aforementioned school were of little consequence.
The author makes clear:
“The truth is sustaining high availability at the standard of five-nines costs a lot of money.” It’s a similar story with stability—at a certain point, it’s too expensive to keep fixing bugs because of the high-opportunity cost of building new features. You need to decide your target for stability just like you would availability, and it should not be 100%.
Okay, flaws are in.
The idea is that “good enough” is now institutionalized.
Interesting. I wonder what happens if that smart software has some issues which surface in unexpected ways.
Good enough, I assume.
Stephen E Arnold, July 26, 2018
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