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Here's part two of our weekend Seth fest, inspired by a recent riff by the man himself.  I'll rehash it in its entirety:

"So, just about everything that can be improved, is being improved. If you define 'improved' to mean more features, more buttons, more choices, more power, more cost. The washing machine I used this morning had more than 125 different combinations of ways to do the wash... don't get me started about the dryer. Clearly, an arms race is a good way to encourage people to upgrade.  I wonder, though, if "good enough" might be the next big idea. Audio players, cars, dryers, accounting... not the best ever made, not the most complicated and certainly not the most energy-consuming. Just good enough. For some people, a clean towel is a clean towel."

This notion of 'good enough' is interesting.  In essence, it can be used to explain the value of 'open source' thinking, and by extention, to desribe the best route forward for software development.

But before diving in at the deep end, it's worth exploring why the cult of 'good enough' makes sense to you and me as consumers.

The question posed by Seth's washing machine is 'what makes good product/service design and delivery?'  Are an arsenal of new features the best way to inspire a purchase?  And where does the value lie in a product or service? 

As a washing machine developer, your goal is likely to be to deliver 'the best' washing machine to households....but what constitutes the best?  It may be that your goal is to develop that 125th washing setting, thereby besting your competitor who can only deliver 124.  But is this valuable?  Certainly not to Seth.

My view is that products and services can be broadly organised into three categories - 'good,' 'better' and 'best,' along a continuum of functionality.  And, in reality, what we see is that products and services with the 'best' features do not always win.  Winners usually prove that they are 'good enough' through other values such as cost, brand, and superior support....and 'better enough' through the delivery of one or two 'must have' features or values. (Meanwhile we'll forget about the merely 'good' products, because plain 'good' isn't good enough any more.)

Here's a couple of examples:

• I write a lot so I buy pens regularly.  I like the idea of those astronaut pens that enable you to write in -400 degrees in a zero gravity environment, but they're expensive and I go for a Jelly Roll instead pen because it's cheaper (I lose lots of pens so I buy them in bulk), and I'm not going to need to write in space anytime soon.  In addition, it also delivers a truly great writing experience (go on, try one - they're so slick!).
  
  
• My wife just gave birth to our first baby, Lucas.  She's not planning to work in the next 12 months, but she is planning to look after Lucas a lot.  Consequently she's asked me to get rid of our two current cars - an old Cherokee 4x4 and an old Mini - because they're not practical for zooming around town with a kid in tow.  I agree to an MPV - they're just sensible.  Now, I like the Cherokee Grand Voyager because we could store Lucas, our dogs, our cats and an elephant in the trunk.  It also comes with blacked out windows and a zillion different features and storage 'solutions.'  However, it costs close to £30k.  So, I buy a Mercedes B Class instead...because it's big-enough for our real needs (we don't own an elephant), it looks great, and you can also dock your iPod in the glove box and control it via the steering wheel - which, when it came to the crunch (aside from size) is the only other feature we really cared about.
  

In both examples, the things I buy deliver the right kind of value and a feature or two that I really care about.  In other words, they are 'good enough,' and they also deliver 'better' features than the things I owned before (and their immediate competitors).  Of course, I could have bought the 'best,' but I can't justify the cost or the wizardry that the best provides....and the best just doesn't seem relevant to my needs.

Which is why, when it comes to product and service development 'good enough' is usually the place to be.

This is mainly because the pursuit of the best is a dangerous game for product and service providers.  It's expensive (lots of costly R&D and production) and it involves the pursuit of questionable markets - ie, a 'best guess' market that you assum exists or a more 'exclusive' market full of those people with enough interest or cash to buy the thing you're developing.

On the contrary, designing for 'good enough' and 'better' can hold far more rewards.  When done properly it's more focused and quicker (your designs have a specific end), and, if researched right, it has a better defined (and more grateful) customer market.

Which brings me to the subject of open source software development.

Let's look at two examples of product development, one open source, the other not:  the Firefox browser and Microsoft Word.

• Microsoft Word has a gazillion features and an upgrade path of one new product every two to three years.  Its product release schedule is defined by Microsoft, as is its feature set.
  
  
• Firefox has a core set of features that enable users to browse the web better than they could previously (eg, through the use of 'tabbed browsing').  Its upgrade path is set by an open source development community - ie, when enough useful feature improvements are introduced to the core product then a new release is made; and these new features are contributed regularly and openly by a worldwide developer base.  Further, as a user I can pick and choose the features that I use through a menu of 'plug-ins' that are available for free via the Firefox web site - and these plug-ins are contributed on a regular basis by the aforementioned developer community.
  

In practise, here's how I use these two products:

• I use Word for writing documents, much like a typewriter.  I use all of the simple editing functionality that word processors deliver, and occasionally the 'mail merge' function when composing a general business letter.  I don't use the other myriad of functions on offer.  However, what I'd really like to do is tweak the style sheet functions for my own needs - in a way that dumbs them right down, but gives me the flexibility to produce professional looking letters with neat things like headers.  But I've never worked out how to do this because it's too complicated.  I'd also like to integrate my timesheet application into it, so that I could easily keep track of the time I spend writing documents.  But this can only be done if Microsoft decides to do it.
  
  
• I use Firefox for browsing the web.  I also use the following plug ins:  FoxyTunes, which enables me to play and control my iTunes via the browser interface; a world clock, to help me see what time it is at our HQ in Sydney; a simple 'email to a friend' application that lets me email any given web page via a couple of quick clicks; and an RSS feed reader, which enables me to receive my favourite RSS feeds without having to open up a separate RSS reader application.  There's a bunch more plug-ins that I'd probably find relevant and useful to use, but I'm waiting for a rainy day to go and source them.
  

In sum, the two development models are built upon different values.  The Microsoft model is built upon Microsoft's pursuit of the 'best,' whereas the Firefox model is built upon delivering a product that's 'good enough' and openly letting developers and users figure out the various features that will make it 'better' than the next browser.  And it's this second approach that makes Firefox so much more valuable to me than Microsoft Word.

The reason this is so is that, as with Seth's washing machine, Microsoft's product development team have taken it upon themselves to define what's best.  And, as another Seth Godin project, This is Broken, regularly demonstrates, this is a dangerous occupation.  Because what's best for you may not be best for me.  You may want 125 cycle setting on your washing machine, but I only need five, and, more importantly, what I really want is easier way of loading my washing tablets and fabric conditioner that doesn't involve the former crumbling on entry and the latter spilling over my shoes.  Likewise, Microsoft may think it's a good idea to introduce an animated dog or a paper clip to help me with my formatting woes once every three years, but this doesn't really help me out and it doesn't enable me to time my writing work more effectively.

By contrast, the open source development model generally gives you a product that's 'good enough,' with the added bonus of giving you the flexibility and/or resources to to 'better' it in a specific way that's more in tune to your needs.  And these 'better value' features may be developed by you or by others, but they are freely available to build and/or use and the product itself is licenced in such a way (ie, via an open source licence) that you can integrate them as you see fit, whenever you need them.

Essentially, this is what we do at Squiz.  Our mission is not to 'out feature' commercial CMS's (although we generally do, as our spec sheet demonstrates).  Rather, we deliver MySource Matrix, an open source CMS that's fit for enterprise deployment (it ticks all the right boxes), and allows you to freely extend it with the key things that make it 'better' or 'the best' for your day to day needs. 

To put it another way, open source product development puts users in control.  It enables them to define what's valuable and it means that the overall act of product development is a shared process, which ensures that costs are kept lower and innovation remains relevant and timely to individual needs....

So, yes, Seth, 'good enough' is indeed a 'big idea' because we're beginning to recognise that the pursuit of the 'best'  may not be in the users best interests.  And whilst this is not a particularly sexy idea, it is a necessary one in order to avoid pointless washing machines and inflexible, over-priced and user-used commercial software.