The underrated power of "good enough" in knowledge management

G.K. Chesterton once wrote that anything worth doing is worth doing badly. It sounds like a typo, but the idea is genuinely useful: if something matters enough to do, it's better to do it imperfectly than not at all. A fast tooth-brushing beats skipping it entirely. A finished but not yet perfect knowledge base beats an award-worthy one that never launches.

Commonly, there is a particular kind of paralysis that sets in partway through a knowledge base project.

You started with the best intentions. A clean outline. A realistic timeline. Maybe even a colour-coded spreadsheet tracking your progress (no judgement: heaven knows I love my traffic light colors, too). And then, slowly, the scope expanded. A stakeholder had thoughts. You noticed a whole section that probably needs to exist. You started wondering if the structure was actually right, and whether you should reorganize before writing more, or write more before reorganizing…

Before long, you're not sure what "done" even means anymore.

Here's the thing: this isn't a you-problem. It's a knowledge management problem. And it happens to almost everyone who has ever tried to build, launch, or relaunch a knowledge base.

Why "perfect" is the enemy of published

When we talk about knowledge bases, the goal is never really perfection, it's usefulness. A knowledge base that exists and answers 70% of your readers' questions is doing infinitely more work than one that's still a draft because you haven't found time to write the remaining 24 articles.

The longer a knowledge base launch drags on, the harder it gets to finish. Momentum matters. Stakeholder enthusiasm has a shelf life. And the people who were going to benefit from that content? They've been finding workarounds in the meantime, some of which are now entrenched habits you'll have to undo.

Getting something out the door isn't settling. It's strategy.

Scope creep is a sneaky little snake

The tricky part about scope creep is that it rarely announces itself. It tends to show up wearing a very reasonable disguise.

"We should probably include this section while we're in here."

"I just want to make sure we cover every possible use case."

"I don't want to launch something that's incomplete."

All of those thoughts come from a genuinely good place. But left unchecked, they can turn a manageable project into a Sisyphean effort.

The antidote isn't lowering your standards. It's getting clearer on what your standards actually are for this launch, right now. What does phase one need to accomplish? What can live in phase two? What would make this launch a success, even if everything else is still in progress?

Defining that up front (and writing it down somewhere you'll actually look at it) changes everything.

Phases are your friend

One of the most useful mindset shifts in knowledge base work is moving from "launch" as a single event to "launch" as an ongoing process.

Phase one might be covering your most-asked questions and getting your core content live. Phase two might be expanding to edge cases and advanced topics. Phase three might be a structural refresh once you've seen how people actually navigate what you built.

This approach isn't just gentler on your workload, it's also better for your readers. You learn what's working, what's confusing, and what's missing from real usage data. Then you iterate. That's not cutting corners; that's building something that improves over time.

"Good enough" isn't forever

Giving yourself permission to launch something good-enough-for-now doesn't mean you're abandoning your standards. It means you're being honest about the fact that a knowledge base is a living document, not a finished product.

The best knowledge bases aren't the ones that launched perfectly. They're the ones that launched, got used, got feedback, and got better.

So if you're sitting on a knowledge base that's 70% of the way there, or staring down a relaunch that keeps expanding before you can finish it, consider this your gentle nudge. Define what "enough" looks like for this phase. Write that down. Launch the darn thing.

You can always come back to make it better. In fact, you most definitely will.

Want a more structured approach to scoping your knowledge base launch? KO's own Kate Mueller is hosting a webinar series this month walking through her change management framework — including a full session dedicated to defining your launch scope. The series is free to all KnowledgeOwl customers. Reach out at support@knowledgeowl.com to register!