Perfect is the enemy of good
The meaning of “The perfect is the enemy
of the good” is that one might never complete a task if one has decided not to stop until it is perfect: completing the project well is made impossible by striving to complete it perfectly. Closely related is the Nirvana fallacy, in which people never even begin an important task because they feel reaching perfection is too hard.
Earlier, Aristotle, Confucius and other classical philosophers propounded the related principle of the golden mean, which counsels against extremism in general.
The Pareto principle or 80–20 rule is a 20th-century analogue. For example, it commonly takes 20% of the full-time to complete 80% of a task, while to complete the last 20% of a task takes 80% of the effort. Achieving absolute perfection may be impossible and so, as increasing effort results in diminishing returns, further activity becomes increasingly inefficient.
Robert Watson-Watt, who developed early warning radar in Britain to counter the rapid growth of the Luftwaffe, propounded a “cult of the imperfect”, which he described as, “Give them the third best to go on with; the second best comes too late, the best never comes.”
Economist George Stigler said that “If you never miss a plane, you’re spending too much time at the airport.”
Gold plating in software engineering, or project management, or time management in general, is the error of continuing to work on a project or task well past the point where the extra effort is worth the value it adds (if any). After having met the requirements, the developer works on further enhancing the product, thinking the customer will be delighted to see additional or more polished features, rather than what was asked for or expected. The customer might be disappointed in the results, and the extra effort by the developer might be futile.
Gold plating is also considered a bad project management practice for different project management best practices and methodologies such as: Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK) and PRINCE2. In this case, ‘gold plating’ means the addition of any feature not considered in the original scope plan (PMBoK) or business case (PRINCE2) at any point of the project since it introduces a new source of risks to the original planning i.e. additional testing, documentation, costs, timelines, etc. However, gold plating does not prevent new features from being added to the project; they can be added at any time as long as they follow the official change procedure and the impact of the change in all the areas of the project is taken into consideration.