Cheap, Fast and Good?

July 24, 2007 by

In the Church Marketing Lab, ‘shawncampbell’ asks the following question:

The concept is simple–There are three choices for any project: budget, timeline, and quality, but only two can be a priority. If it needs to be good and fast, it’ll be expensive. But, if it must be cheap and good, it’ll take a while. Cheap and fast will lack quality.

Can you have all three?

What have your experiences been with this? Have you seen all three work in any situation? Is this a policy worth using, or have you seen it proved otherwise?

Head over and help ‘shawncampbell’ out!

Post By:

Joshua Cody


Josh Cody served as our associate editor for several years before moving on to bigger things. Like Texas. These days he lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, and you can find him online or on Twitter when he's not wrestling code.
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4 Responses to “Cheap, Fast and Good?”

  • Noel
    July 24, 2007

    My mechanic has a sign that says the same thing.


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  • Damian
    July 24, 2007

    This is called the “triple constraint”. Like the principle that energy doesn’t go away, but rather changes shape, you pretty much can’t work around this one.
    I explained this concept to a friend in the printing business, he said he’d heard of it, and that he provided all three. I told him that all three for his clientèle were possible… but it was he that paid the price, not to mention his family, etc. Someone, somewhere along the line sacrifices quality, time, or resource.


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  • myles
    July 25, 2007

    As a project manager I was taught that there are 4 variables to a project: cost, quality, time and scope. The list above misses out on ‘scope’. Scope creep is a HUGE project killer. All four variables need good project management – and a single project can have them all…but the usual determining factor is having a clearly defined and well managed scope.


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  • i would add some more issues here.. inany processes in there will be always the project scope, high-level timelines, budget, quality, risks.. they may vary of course but still it depends of course of the project itself.


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