A debate on whether striving for perfection means you never achieve a successful outcome.

At times in our lives we may all strive for perfection because perfection, we think, is the pinnacle of all our efforts. But have you ever gone on holiday hoping that this time it will be perfect? It never is, or not in my experience, but that is not to say that the holiday is not very enjoyable it's just that life is rarely perfect so why do some of us continually strive for perfection when less than perfect is usually good enough.

I don't want to sound all doom and gloom and there is an advantage to striving for perfection – it actually means you will achieve more than if you just strive for something mediocre, but, nevertheless, in life you need to recognise when something is good enough.

If you have ever read the Dalai Lama's "The Art of Happiness" you will know that his view of life is that by seeking perfection we will never be happy, but we could be happy by accepting that life is not perfect. There are also plenty of books about "good enough" parenting, the concept first suggested by Donald Winnicott to defend good, ordinary parents from the "experts" imposing their opinions on family life and bringing up children.
So a perfect project, whatever that project may be from a simple web app development project to the construction of a road bridge, may be an unattainable ideal and in trying to attain the ideal we may, in fact, make the project unsuccessful because we run over budget or over time. And yet the seeking of perfection is a way to achieve the very best we can and many projects, of course, start from the baseline of some imperfect situation so we are trying to change the imperfect. Maybe then it is only natural to expect, or at least hope, that imperfection will become perfection if we expend time, effort and money on it.
But perfection involves changing minor details in the specifications, tasks and final deliverables, which will always have a negative effect on cost and time, and may not even be noticed by the end-user. Trying to seek perfection can lead to continual tweaking with something that is perfectly satisfactory until, no matter what we do, it will never seem perfect. One could argue (as the Dalai Lama does) that perfectionism is, in fact, a bad trait and never leads to a good outcome.

A good project, on the other hand, means that you plan thoroughly, monitor closely, ensure you create something fit-for-purpose and make changes that improve the overall deliverable only if they do not add an unacceptable time or cost burden. And, of course, that you don't make changes just for the sake of making changes. That way you will reap the benefits of project management.

So rather than striving for perfection, instead strive for "good enough" in your projects. Something to think about – but, a word of caution,just maybe not if your projects involve creating products that need to have rigorous safety standards such as scuba-diving equipment, parachutes or medical equipment!