Dealing with urgent issue.

One way or another most of us need to deal with problems in our daily life. If the problem confronting us deem insignificant or rather not serious enough to warrant immediate attention, we tend to want to just blush it off, close one eye, hope that someone else will come and fix the problem for us or ignore it all together hoping that the problem will go away the following day or as time goes by. If we are lucky, we might just get away from the problem, otherwise a trivial problem left unresolved would come back to haunt us in a bigger and more threatening way.
Either way, to resolve a problem, serious or trivial, we need to first understand what the problem is, the consequences of the problem and thereafter based on our understanding of the problem, devised a solution to address and resolve the problem.

Due to circumstances, for instance time constraint to resolve a complicated or difficult problem at hand, we may end up deriving and eventually deploying a solution to address a problem that is effective only on a short-term basis but not effective or rather not workable nor applicable on the longer-term basis. Hard press for timeline, we may be tempted to take the easy way out by delivering a temporary get around solution to the problem instead of addressing the root cause of a problem. A temporary get around solution to a problem may or may not be a wise decision. Life is imperfect so I guess at times it makes sense to find the most expedient means and manner to resolve an urgent problem without having to worry too much about how perfect or how good the solution is. So long as the solution we seek do not create side effects or create other new problems it makes sense to quickly deploy if time is not on your side. Deploy a solution to get over a crisis first and at the same time continue to fine tune that solution or explore other more robust and effective long-term permanent solution to address that problem and other potential shortcomings. In other words, get a quick fix and then work towards a long-term permanent fix when time permits.

Microsoft knows all too well with regards to the philosophy of quick fix; the company response quickly to releasing software patches to address serious program flaws and while at the same time work vigorously in the background towards releasing more robust and consolidated long term software fixes via service pack releases.
The same goes in our daily life whereby we take painkillers such as aspirin to tide over headache while we are in the office. We don’t rush to the clinic and ask for complete lengthy and thorough medical checkout whenever we have headache.


Perfectionist on the other hand though usually seek to deliver a solution that is as close as ideal in solving a problem once and for all. As much as we all want to solve a problem in the best possible way and permanently, however we know that this is not possible in reality given the time constraint.

I am reminded of a software engineer who took weeks trying to fix a simple software bug. When asked why he needed a week or more to resolve the software bug, he said he needed time to clean up and rewrite a sizeable portion of the software because he felt the code was badly written, hard to understand, difficult to maintain, basically he just don’t like the way the code were being written. As one responsible for software project deliverable, I had no choice but to insist he work out a less elegant and quick temporary software patch in order to meet the tight schedule.

I guess that’s how life goes; we live in a constant fast paced society that demands quick solution to anything and everything. We can provide the best solution to a problem but if it takes ages to deliver the ideal solution, you can bet it is as good as delivering nothing at all.