How often have you wanted your cake and eat it too? For most of us its too often. The boss comes to you as say he or she wants a new project completed within a week, with little or no budget and of course wants the best quality known to man. This simply doesn’t work well.

This is an old adage, but reliable. You can’t have something with low cost, high quality in a short time. You can 2 of the 3, but no all three in most circumstances. Think it through, if you have plenty of time, normally you can control cost and still have high quality production. High quality can still be maintained often also with little time as long as you have money to throw at the situation.

But when is it OK to sacrifice quality? Are the standards defined? If the project is needed quickly with no money to be spent, a new standard may need to be defined. Next post we will discuss what quality is and is not.

What questions do you need to ask with your current projects as related to this set of three?