You can only have two
We are going to learn a bit about a useful tool to help us make decisions prioritizing some traits of our work over the remainder ones. Let me introduce you to the cost-time-quality triangle:
The triangle itself is nothing new or recently discovered, I am sure every manager worldwide is aware of it, or at least should be! Basically, what we have is a set of three properties (quality, cost and time), and the point here is that, at a given point in time, you can only count on two of them. In other words, if we applied this to a wide range of ways to accomplish with a task, it tells us that we can´t wind up with a cheap and high-quality result in a short time. I will refer to the title of this post: you can only have two. With three elements at play, picking them two by two, we get three possibilities:
A) Quality & Time
High-quality solutions in short times. A steal? Uhmm, beware the available budget!
B) Cost & Time
Cheap and swift, then? The quality will suffer!
C) Quality & Cost
Cheap and good? Be sure you finish it in a realistic span of time! Crackin’ the whip would help …
No combination is better than the others, it depends on your situation. Personally, I find the hardest part to find a balance between the three of them so that you feel sort of successful when you finish the task.