Fast, Good AND Cheap
I’ve heard people tell me “We can build product fast, good, or cheap. You can’t have all three. Pick two.” I believe this is a corrosive mindset, used by bureaucrats to justify mediocrity, or used by people who are afraid of failure to set the bar low enough so they feel comfortable in their daily lives.
I’ve often seen the reverse, that many of the best consumer products were fast, good and cheap to create. Those products were created by people who were very talented or very focused, and certainly none of them were dragging around this self limiting belief that you have to pick only two.
Hi James, Do any examples or counter-examples come to mind?
Nivi
December 24, 2009 at 1:20 am
Fast, Good and Cheap: Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, FourSquare, Groupon, MySpace, Fickr, PhotoBucket, Texas Hold ‘Em on FB (which lead to Zynga), (lil) Green Patch on FB (which launched the social gaming category and could have lead to Zynga), and then the Web 1.0 winners like CraigsList, Match.com, Monster, and eBay.
Slow, expensive and good: Amazon, Google, everything Apple, the F8 platform on FB.
Slow, expensive and crappy: most other stuff, like Zune, A9, all of KPCB’s stealth companies, all of EA’s attempts at social gaming on FB, LinkedIn (even though it won through lack of competition), all of Yahoo’s startup attempts in the last 3 years.
jamescurrier
December 29, 2009 at 6:14 am
James,
You are comparing apples and oranges.
The common thread in your “Slow, Expensive, Good” examples is that there is more to the product/service (technical complexity, financial regs., logistics whatever) that what you see from a user’s standpoint.
The “Fast Cheap Good” is all WYSIWYG (mostly) and largely web/mobile applications that piggy-back on other infrastructure.
No excuses for the crappy stuff…
I would bet that something like SquareUp would take time to build given all the regulations and infrastructure that needs to be built. Some things can only be built so fast (good or crappy).
-Rajesh
Rajesh
December 29, 2009 at 7:17 pm
It’s not the tech that’s the point of the post, it’s the means.
Bureaucrats justifying mediocracy. Place markers building their little empire. Mel Conway explained it in 1968.
I’m a scrum master. To me scrum is the only rational way to control chaotic projects; that’s software to you.
The good, fast and cheap is a natural consequence of scrum’s focus on ROI.
mel
December 30, 2009 at 12:00 am
actually, i don’t think it’s impossible to build fast, good, AND cheap, however i DO think it’s difficult to prioritize all 3 at the same time (or even 2, really).
most things are built with only 1 of these as priorities, with possibly a 2nd constraint as a minimum rqmt. (ex: PayPal was pretty crappy at first, and was PRIMARILY built with an emphasis on viral distribution (Fast & Cheap), while maintaining basic functional use as a payment mechanism, and while limiting overall system fraud activity to a manageable % (not Good, but Good Enough).
thus, while Twitter is arguably fast, good, & cheap now, it certainly wasn’t great when it started, and it wasn’t very fast either (and not very reliable at all, as noted by almost everyone). it was built cheap & simple, and because it did it well *enough*, it was good (enough).
at the same time, most of Apple and Amazon products were built with GOOD as primary emphasis, and Cheap ENOUGH as the constraint… and perhaps some rqmts on speed, altho not clear they have as much focus there.
anyway, agreed that we shouldn’t let narrow-minded thinking rule the day when aiming for breakthrough products & services, but probably good to have a clear primary emphasis, along with secondary constraints.
my .02,
Dave McClure
January 1, 2010 at 11:39 am
The original form of this dictum (used forever in the systems development world) is ‘Performance, Cost, Schedule – pick any two’.
George Rebane
January 13, 2010 at 6:40 pm
[...] Ooga Labs: Fast, Good AND Cheap [...]
Heather Podcasts – Good, Fast, Cheap – Pick 2 (Episode 2) | Heather Villa
May 24, 2010 at 5:07 am
Well all these blanket statements are kind of generalizations but… I think the saying succeeds in articulating that there has to be a trade off at some point.
Nowadays, in the web, stuff is very “cheap” and you can do stuff very “fast” – of course, those are all extremely relative terms but I think most people can define what that means.
“Good” is a very hard statement to define – a lot of people would define “good” for a software product has having a lot of features. And generally, a lot of features takes more time. So you need to sacrifice time for features…..
I don’t really see how the saying is harmful, it articulates a important issue.
The same thing goes for food – Cheap, Healthy, Tasty – choose 2.
Or buying a house – Good Location, Cheap, or Nice/Large.
Scott Schulthess
August 2, 2010 at 1:31 pm