Journal

Good, fast and cheap?

Posted on April 6th, 2005, in the small hours

Jason Kottke has an excellent observation up today called 'Pick Two', on the (apparently well known) adage about design projects that of good, fast and cheap you can only ever have two. He comes up with a few other variations.

So true I think. It's really helping me think about how I work as a web designer. Certainly for churches and charities I aim to provide good quality work at a low cost. I have sometimes felt bad about the fact that most of those kinds of projects take a long time, felt that I should be quicker. But in the real world hitting all three is impossible.

Good quality work takes time unless you devote yourself exclusively to the project, but you have to earn enough to eat. If you are to devote all your time to a project you need to be paid enough that you don't have to do anything else while it's on (including getting more work for when the project is finished). It's those hidden costs - the unpaid time it takes to quote for work, research, learn new skills etc. - that can easily get missed out of the equation. If I'm going to do the job well (and on that point there's no option) and for a low cost I need to be able to do a whole load of other things as well as the project at hand, so it will take longer.

I'll reflect on it further because I wouldn't want to use that as an excuse for slackness, but it really does seem to make sense of the balancing act I've felt I'm having to perform.