RE: "Good enough"

["Damien Braniff" <Damien -dot- Braniff -at- asg -dot- com>]

<My question for you folks is, how do you all cope with "good enough,"
and how often does it show up?>

Craig,

Good enough is always there and how we deal with it often comes down to
time and money - how best we use the resources available.

Users, often/generally (?), have not the best opinion of documentation
and may be delighted to get 'good enough' - satisfactory results with
minimum effort. If the docs help them do what they want to do quickly
and easily then they're satisfied and won't be too worried about
grammar, layout etc.

As professionals, in the normal run of things, we do worry about it and
work to provide something better. If they use our docs and find what
they need quickly and easily, AND it looks good, is well written etc
then maybe we improve their overall opinion of documentation.

However, when money's short, deadlines loom etc then we can and often do
without the 'polish' - as long as it does the job, then it's fine by me.

I've never written a 'perfect' document (still trying!) but over the
years I've written some good ones that I was very happy with, some that
were 'good enough' that I was happy with within the constraints in place
and a few that I wasn't at all happy with because the constraints didn't
even allow for 'good enough' (didn't stay there long!). I think I'd say
most of  my docs have been 'good enough', just some better than others
:-)

Damien

 





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