Good, cheap, fast – choose all three

The idea behind this saying is that there is a certain amount of work to be done to deliver a task, service or product, and that work is bounded by the limits of cost, time and quality.

If you try to improve any two of these factors, the third will be impacted. If you want something fast and cheap, for example, it won’t be any good. If you want it good and fact, it wont come cheap.

It’s like seeing work as an incompressible cube – if you press on two axies, the third will expand.

This is only true if the work really is incompressible. There is in fact a way to make things faster, better and cheaper, and that is the removal of waste.

If there is waste in the body of work, then removal of the waste will alllow all three axes to contract.

This is the principle behind Lean approaches to manufacturing, supply chain and product design, and is also an area that Knowledge Management can help with. Through effective KM, we can reduce waste from activity, and compress the “work cube”.

Good, cheap fast – if you use KM to reduce waste from work, you can pick all three.