Save more or save time

When thinking about a project, you must pick between minimizing cost and minimizing time. To think that you will do both is foolish. Pushing your team to do both just creates stress 1.

Pick two

A common refrain is: faster, cheaper, better pick two. Kent Beck adds to this to include “more”, or an expansion in scope2. He anchors on quality being a constant so you get:

  • Better/Sooner/Cheaper - Spiking to get better feedback (Exploring)
  • Better/Sooner/More - Deliver features quickly without constraining cost (Expand)
  • Better/Cheaper/More - economically deliver features for the long run (Extract)

References

1.
DeMarco, T. Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency. (Currency, 2002).
2.
Beck, K. Better/Sooner/Cheaper/More. at https://tidyfirst.substack.com/p/bettersoonercheapermore (2022).

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