One of the few websites I visit regularly is one for the public radio show Prairie Home Companion for their old show archive. There is one section in their home page is letters to the host of the show, and this time, someone asked about the Scandinavian principle of “good enough.” The show is from Minnesota, many people there are of Scandinavian origin, and the host regularly jokes about his own origin. So the good enough principle is one of them.
So writer of that letter was commenting how he has trouble finding that principle anywhere online, including Google search, and so of course next thing I do, I google for “Good Enough”. First result, POGE from wikipedia.org, I was like, of course the Wikipedia. But it’s not quite the Scandinavian principle, but the rule of software and system design. Then I remember back in the school days, I may have learned something about POGE in Software Engineering… The reasoning behind it is simple, we can take forever trying to improve the program/system, trying to get it perfect. So the only way to know when to stop is to achieve Good Enough.
It also reminds me of someone telling me just a short while ago, seeing one of the clients have this saying on the wall, “Ask for the Impossible, Receive the Good Enough” Fairly common mentality in my industry (sadly).
