Cheap, Fast, Good… Choose Two

I read this ages ago, I think via one of Cal Evans’ articles. I highly suggest reading Nerd Herding by the way. Now Markus Breuer pointed me to a very nice graphical representation of the idea.

Source: CreativeBits: Lessons Clients Need to Learn

This one is really true to a very good degree. It’s interesting to think about this in the light of outsourcing though, moving parts of your company somewhere else, focusing on what you really do well. If you move software development to India for example, it would likely be cheaper than in germany, and possibly even faster due to more people coding. The above image would then say that it will be worse quality. What about outsourcing your development to some eastern countries, at least to a big part. Many seem to be doing really well with it.

Of course you can agrue that I am turning different knobs here as I am changing the price for the same thing, but this is what you might have to think about. If you want it as fast as you get it now, at the same quality, then you will need to change the price you get it at or it will become more expensive. Sounds contractictory when first thinking about it, but the idea is that instead of hireing 10 more people internally, you hire them somewhere where the same quality is cheaper. You have transaction costs associated with this though which means it only works for larger projects.