When is good enough, good enough?

Just to be clear, this post is being written from a place of frustration. Those of you who follow me know that I have been working on launching my online class “Websites that Perform, and how to get one” for a bit.  Cobbling together the time to put it together has been challenging as has figuring out the nuances of delivering a class online. I am so pleased with the content, so excited to get this out there and as of yesterday, I was on the precipice of being done. As part of my final items, I went through the customer sign up process to make sure everything worked and I noticed a user interface issue that I hated. The issue was a systemic one not a bug.  That means you can’t really fix it… it just works in a way that I think isn’t a good user experience.

 

Aside from wanting to make me pull my hair out stand by strand, this makes me ponder the deep question of “When is good enough, good enough?” You frequently hear advise to launch before you are ready or act now and correct later.  But how do you balance that with not putting something out to the world that you think sucks? When is dissatisfaction with a product you are launching perfectionism and when is it a real alarm bell telling you to step back and keep trying until you get it right?

 

I am not sure there is clear cut answer. For me, the answer was simply that if I would advise a client against launching, that I couldn’t advise myself to do the same.  We are back to the drawing board for a new solution which will cost precious time and money but that I can stand behind.  What do you think, when is good enough, good enough?