Excellence

Excellence is when we demand more of ourselves than our clients do. It is something that happens when you make right choices over and over again, especially when noone is looking. Excellence in the little things always adds up to excellence in the big things - and the diametric is also true. We get to choose where we live on the bell curve of excellence. Sometimes that is a business decision because there are certainly things where it just doesnt matter and you "dont let a nickel hold up a dollar", especially if it is your client's dollar... you simply get the job done, let him make his dollar, and clean up the code later. Then there are places where it might matter or where it really does matter - excellence in these cases means you do it right the first time, every time.

Perfection is the unnatainable thing you strive for when you are trying to prove you can do the job. Excellence, on the other hand, is the confident pursuit of highest quality when you believe in what you are doing and that its value warrants your persistent committment. When there is a question of time and/or quality, people can forget how fast you completed a project, but the quality of your work they never forget - it speaks of your character.