As a developer (or any creative service provider for that matter,) good, fast, and cheap can leave you burned out or broke. That doesn’t mean better, faster and cheaper [than your competition.] It means giving your best work, at an uncomfortable pace, for less than it’s worth.
If you find yourself working all hours of the night but light on cash, chances are pretty good that you’re trying to offer all three. If that’s the case, you’re probably also in the majority opinion: good, fast and cheap sucks.
About five years ago, the owner of an ad agency told us you can’t provide all three. It was the first time I’d heard of the good, fast, cheap triangle. I completely agree, if 100% of your business is service. But, as a web developer, I can’t think of a reason anybody would want to be 100% service.
We have hundreds of clients that need common cms components, for instance. If we created these tools from the ground up every time, fast and cheap would be the last thing we’d be known as. Instead, we treat components like these as [software] products, and it makes our workflow profoundly more efficient.
The domino effect here is obvious. Your pricing can be more competitive and your timelines can be tighter. (This is where I’d quote Built to Last if I had actually read it.)
I don’t agree with the good, fast, cheap triangle – sometimes you can pick more than two. (Again, these are relative terms. If ep had a mission statement, the word “cheap” wouldn’t appear.) My views on the topic have changed dramatically over the last few years.
We’re a few days out from the official release of our newest venture, Wellstream Online. Wellstream targets a large enterprise audience and is more like 5% service. It’s all about good, fast and cheap. It strikes me as noteworthy how much more fun good, fast and cheap is when it doesn’t require working all/every night.
2 Responses to “Good, fast and cheap”
I use the triangle every day. We run a studio for inside another company. People want things al the time from use, and a lot that are outside our scope. It has become a place to start most discussions with any project. I can do anything for them, but how do they want it? My company ties my hands and their company ties their hands. I cannot untie my knot until they untie theirs. If they want something great and fast, I can through people and resources at it (thus making it expensive). If they have the time, I can do it in my downtime (thus making it very inexpensive).
I don’t like to us it, but it gives people a reality to work inside. With all the tools available today, regular people think production work is easy and fast. Most cases, it is not. I like to reference another type of job when I give them the triangle. If you want you car fixed today so you can leave on a trip, it will be expensive. If you can wait a week, it will be less expensive.
It’s true, how many nights can you work and for how much? I’ll spend two hours with an Easy-Bake oven making not so easy Cin-a-buns with my daughter, but how long will I spend on a project that does not leave me the time or resources to make the Easy-Bake-athon happen.
I’ll put “Built to Last” on the need to read list.
Hello JG – I swear I already left a response to this – I must be going crazy. I think it went something like this:
I understand and fear the triangle in the world offline. Online I think there are efficiencies that can help you with good and fast. In those cases, price is a variable. We have a client that refers to licensing technology as selling air. I agree with at least half of his theory. But there’s probably a whole post coming on this thought soon.
Thanks for stopping.