What is Good Enough in Software Engineering?

In software engineering landscape, one of the most important lessons is realizing that not every project needs the same level of technical craftmanship. While academic environments often drill into us the idea of striving for perfection, the reality of the workplace tells a different story.

The real world landscape operates under different constraints which is mainly time, budget, and human resources all play vital role in defining what “good enough” means the project.

The Corporate Software Split: Money Makers vs. Support Systems

In my experience, most companies have two types of software projects, and they are treated in different ways. Also Each comes with its own expectations around quality and resource investment.

Money Makers

First, you have got your money makers, the projects that actually bring in revenue.These projects are the backbone of the business, the ones that get all the love (and budget). Think customer-facing applications, core business platforms, that sort of thing. Companies pour resources into these because they are what brings money. The teams working on these often get to play with the latest tools and technologies, and there’s usually a constant push for new features to stay ahead of competitors.The goal is simple: make them the best they can be. That means investing in top-tier user experiences, frequent feature updates, and closely monitoring customer feedback and competitors.

Something not surprising here, speed often takes priority over perfection always. If cutting corners on technical debt helps a product reach the market faster, many businesses will accept that trade-off. Most of the time these projects also tend to have larger teams, better tools, and more room for experimentation and innovation.

Support Systems

Then there are the support systems the internal tools that keep the company running smoothly but dont directly make money. These are our typical back-office applications, admin dashboards, and internal automation tools. They are important, for sure, but they are viewed as cost centers rather than profit generators. These projects usually operate on tighter budgets with smaller teams, and the focus is more on “does it work?” than “is it the best?”

The Lifecycle of Internal Tools

Here’s something interesting I have noticed over the years: most companies start out buying off-the-shelf software for their internal needs (it does make sense esp for startups). But as they grow, there is often this tipping point where building their own tools starts to make more sense. Maybe the commercial solutions get too expensive at scale, or maybe they just cant handle the company’s specific needs anymore, or they are buggy enough to be replaced.

The Opinionated Quality

Here is the thing that often trips up newer engineers: what counts as “good enough” varies wildly between these types of projects. You might have one team writing beautiful, perfectly architected code with full test coverage, while another team is cranking out functional-but-basic internal tools. And you know what? That’s actually okay.

The Business of Things (BoT)

I willl be honest this took me a while to accept, but software quality isnt just about technical excellence or perfection. It’s about business value. Sometimes a quick-and-dirty solution that meets the business needs is actually better than an architecturally perfect system that takes three times as long to build. Software exists to solve problems and meet needs. The resources poured into its development should match the value it brings to the table.

What I’ve Learned

The real skill in software engineering isn’t just writing perfect code - it’s knowing when perfect is overkill. Sometimes your project needs to be a finely crafted Swiss watch, and sometimes it just needs to be a reliable hammer.

If you’re new to the industry, this might feel wrong. We all want to write beautiful, perfect code all the time. But part of growing as an engineer is learning to match your effort to the project’s actual needs. That internal tool that five people use once a month? Maybe it doesn’t need microservices and kubernetes.

So your project’s importance in the business ecosystem determines its destiny. Some projects will be innovation hubs with constant improvement, others will be basic but functional tools that just need to work. And that’s exactly how it should be.