You Pick 2: Fast, Cheap, Good

If you work in or around the tech or creative industry, you’ve likely heard someone say that a project can be done fast, cheap, and good–but you can only pick two of those options. Feels disappointing, right? But what do people actually mean by that? Why do they say it? Where did this idea come from? And is it even true?

What’s It All Mean?

The saying “fast, cheap, good…pick two” means that:

something done cheap & fast will not be good
something done good & cheap will not be fast
something done fast & good will be expensive

But looking beyond the literal words to the underlying concept it seeks to articulate the need for balance between time, resources, and scope in any project you wish to be successful. In project management it’s known as the “triple constraint.”

But Why Do People Say It?

Imagine that you’re a busy creative agency with a (mostly) full schedule. Along comes a customer with a new project that’s got a very short timeline. Ask yourself: what could make you take the time (and risk the anger of your clients on existing projects) to rearrange your schedule to take this new project? If the first thing that comes to mind is “a rush fee”–you’re not alone. Charging a rush fee to bump a project to the front of the production queue is pretty common.

A quick dig around the internet will show basic advice to freelancers to charge anywhere from 25-300 % of the original job cost as a rush fee on a project. This jives with the tech industry standard of adding a 25% buffer for unknown to any project estimate. It is also a good (real-world) example of a project done fast and good becoming expensive.

Here’s another example: you worked all day and then had to drive a long way home. It’s getting pretty late. You are exhausted–but you’re also hungry and you know you need to eat dinner. A healthy, home-cooked meal is just not feasible so you steel yourself and head to McDonald’s for a quick meal. This meal is cheap & fast (and fills you up) but we can all agree that it’s not a good meal overall.

I think it’s important to just say out loud here that none of this is meant to shame or judge; fast, cheap, and good are all completely subjective and while there’s some baselines that can typically be agreed upon ($.01 is pretty cheap and .5 of a second is pretty fast) we’re not writing this article in order to conflate “good” and “right.” While we pride ourselves on creating exceptional work and wish that it was viable for every one of our clients to prioritize “good” in their projects–but we also won’t turn away a client simply because they may not be able to comfortably afford (financially or otherwise) a “good” product.

Which is an interesting segue into some of the arguments against the fast, cheap, good metric; some folks believe that the options are just wrong in this model because no one would intentionally choose something that is low quality–but the prevalence of fast fashion, the existence of Wish.com, and many, many other examples should be enough to tell us that isn’t true.

Similarly, those arguments state that no one would invest time and money in something they don’t care about the outcome of–but my decades of experience in the industry losing projects to low-cost bidders tells me this isn’t true; often the desired outcome is getting something for as little as possible, regardless of the quality.

So, How Do I Use Any Of this?

While some people want to relegate the fast, cheap, good, pick two manifesto to just the jargony world of under-handed tech bros, I believe it’s more than that; it is a useful way to help client and project teams come together around the fundamental need to have clear project expectations and priorities. I also believe that it helps remind people of the value of time spent on work–whatever the work may be.

Here’s some practical guidelines you can use, built on the triple constraint and shored up with our own project methodologies to help give you the foundation to ensure your projects are successful, from the ground up:

When you prioritize quality, give yourself plenty of time to complete the work. Be aware of whether or not dates and milestones are fixed or flexible. Bring in strategic partners to help you if you don’t have the time to complete the work yourself.

Practice: Building a realistic timeline. Start with the “go live” or “ship by” or “project completion date” and work backwards to your project kickoff date, adding items in their reverse chronological order and with an estimate of time to complete.

When you prioritize keeping costs low, be transparent with your client about what level of imperfections in the final product they are okay with (shipping with fewer features, having fewer concepts to choose from, etc.)

Practice: Saying “no” often. Making a “wishlist” for future phases. Asking “is this thing more important for meeting our project goals than this other thing?”

When you prioritize speed, increase the budget to reflect the overall impact on your business; if you have to deprioritize other projects, make sure you’re covering the potential loss income associated with that change.