{"id":6513,"date":"2022-09-16T15:52:48","date_gmt":"2022-09-16T07:52:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/slash.bravefactor.com\/?post_type=resources&#038;p=6513"},"modified":"2024-01-24T13:36:22","modified_gmt":"2024-01-24T05:36:22","slug":"why-prioritizing-between-good-cheap-or-fast-is-a-must","status":"publish","type":"resources","link":"https:\/\/slash.co\/articles\/why-prioritizing-between-good-cheap-or-fast-is-a-must","title":{"rendered":"Why Prioritizing Between Good, Cheap or Fast is a Must"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Life as we know it, is more akin to that box of chocolates than we often want to admit to ourselves. We all want the chocolate that we like the most with our preferred filling, but not knowing leaves it to chance and it doesn\u2019t always work out. Dark or milk chocolate, soft or hard center, chewy or creamy and so on.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the world of software development, there is a similar game of chance played between good, cheap or fast. We can seem to reliably get two, but the third eludes our grasp. Therefore, prioritizing which combination is important to your project will lead you to selecting the best combo option. The goal here is to help you evaluate the combo options and details therein to make the best selection.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u00a0<\/span><b>Cheap &amp; Fast<\/b><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u00a0<\/span><b>Fast &amp; Good<\/b><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u00a0<\/span><b>Good &amp; Cheap<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">First off let\u2019s acknowledge the lack of a roadmap strategy, sadly an all too often occurrence that can be avoided. The roadmap strategy is knowing all or at least 2~3 steps in advance of how the product is going to evolve. the first step is often referred to as the minimum viable product, or MVP. Therefore, you should know MVP1, MVP2 &amp; MVP3 before you even begin. Knowing what you need in the foreseeable project future enables you to start planning what is important to you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example, if quality is not a key component for MVP1 because you\u2019re just aiming for a concept and feedback therein, then perhaps selecting cheap &amp; fast is most suitable at this stage. Now fast forward to say MVP5, you find yourself launching a new feature which is quite pricey and quality is suddenly an important factor. Hence having a roadmap, knowing what you\u2019re doing and what your priority is between good, cheap or fast is a must. Naturally your priorities may change as the product evolves and therefore, the focus from cheap &amp; fast may shift to fast &amp; good.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The communication between you and your vendor is, as you rightly figured, quite important. If you feel that your vendor is a yes-man, this should be an immediate red flag moment. A vendor who simply answers yes to all your requests while taking zero notes, seemingly ignoring the fact that your budget is $20k while you\u2019ve requested a product that will cost $200k\u2026 all we can say is, good luck. That product will never come, and what you will get will be of hopelessly poor quality to name only a single problem.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Do your research, find where the balance is between the three points rather than over focusing on the negotiation to get the best deal. Do that and you may please your superior, but ultimately the project will crash and burn spectacularly. Find the sweet spot between cheap, good or fast and you will manage to develop the product that you need.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>How do you do fast and well?<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ah yes, the holy grail of development. We challenge you to answer this, but beware as the answer is more elusive than you may think. Naturally here at Slash we know how software works; that is, it\u2019s not about fast starts. Remember the tortoise and the hare? If so, surely you recall the adage \u201cslow and steady wins the race.\u201d This is software in a nutshell. You start slow, you storm, you fight to find your velocity and then you reach your maximum speed. However, that speed does not translate to fast.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ultimately no one understands or knows how long projects take therefore, making it all about a negotiation of cost. Also keep in mind, you cannot have it paired with deadlines. You may negotiate for something to be delivered in two months and find that three or four months later you\u2019re still waiting. Why? Well often the product evolved into something much bigger than originally negotiated.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If your tech vendor is extremely optimized and specialized for developing a specific type of product which you conveniently need, then perhaps fast and well is on the menu. It&#8217;s like if we hire a guy to change a light bulb in the office and his one job is \u201cbulb changer,\u201d then yes it\u2019ll be fast cause it\u2019s all he does. Though in the software field, this simply doesn\u2019t exist.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Coming back then, how do you do fast and well? We have yet to answer this enigma. We can confidently prepare our development teams to be efficient, but this does not translate to fast and well. It\u2019s just simply not that easy. So we invite you to answer, if you can!<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>The Killer \u201c\u2026 right?\u201d<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We cannot recall the number of times a client has asked us something to the tune of, \u201cYou can make this simple change, right?\u201d Or, \u201cThis shouldn\u2019t take long, right?\u201d This little \u201cright?\u201d though innocuously innocent, causes more problems that you can imagine. If you ask your vendor a question, please don\u2019t already have the answer, the answer you are wanting to hear. Is the intent to ask a genuine question, or simply for the other party to agree with you? This is not the way to communicate; every tech vendor and client knows this, but somehow this merry-go-round continues.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Why do we mention this? Well for one, it\u2019s killing a lot in the development process. Especially taking into account when you have vendors and clients from opposite ends of the globe; the cultural gap is wide. The typical developer, when asked, \u201cThis is easy, right?\u201d, will always give the same answer\u2026 \u201cYes!\u201d Naturally there are exceptions, but we\u2019re addressing the standard.\u00a0 It\u2019s a killer because it destroys the ability to truly understand how much needs to be done which in turn impairs your roadmap strategy simultaneously throwing your selection of good, cheap or fast into disarray. So let\u2019s check \u201cright?\u201d at the door and have an honest conversation with genuine questions!<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Fixed scope vs Changing scope, your choice\u2026 BIG Choice!<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The fact is, nowadays a good 90% of people who engage in software projects have no clue what the end product will look like. It\u2019s a situation which presents the mother of all unknown unknowns; in comes Agile with a flexible roadmap strategy no doubt.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you go into a fixed scope looking for an estimate and there\u2019s an 80% chance that it\u2019s going to change, well let\u2019s just say you\u2019ll likely find yourself up a certain river minus a paddle. You\u2019ll end up spending countless hours discussing with your vendor, \u201cThis is equal to that, right?\u201d and so on. The killer \u201cright?\u201d comes in for the death blow. Your project will naturally pivot and it will lead you into vast amounts of wasted time via conversations that seem to go in circles.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To put a pin in this, it\u2019s not about trying to get the cheapest project estimate because you have a fixed scope, rather the cheapest is actually the changing scope. Nice curveball, right? It\u2019s a fact that it\u2019s cheaper to budget for a pivoting project rather than a fixed project. Yes, we know, the ironies abound herein. If you buy a fixed scope and decide to change, good and fast go down the drain!<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Success Depends on Relationships<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A final point to make here is the success of your software project does not hang on your negotiation skill, but rather on the relationship you build with your vendor. There\u2019s power in being friendly with your neighbors, no? We jest, but you see the point; when you need that cup of sugar, you know you can get it when you have good relationships. If you build a quality relationship with your vendor, there is no doubt they will do whatever it takes to get you what you need whether it\u2019s good, cheap or fast.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And the final irony herein is that at the end of the day it\u2019s not about selecting only two of the three good, cheap or fast. It\u2019s actually about finding a compromise between the three and investing everything into the relationship.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":6514,"parent":0,"template":"","resource-topic":[],"resource-type":[43],"class_list":["post-6513","resources","type-resources","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","resource-type-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slash.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resources\/6513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slash.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resources"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slash.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/resources"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slash.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slash.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"resource-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slash.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource-topic?post=6513"},{"taxonomy":"resource-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slash.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource-type?post=6513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}