Today at work, my manager and I were talking a bit about a last-minute project that came in.  The client, of course, wants it all: an amazing site, priced next-to-nothing, and they want it done yesterday.  During the conversation, he said something to the effect of "Quality, Price, & Speed: which two do you want?"  I realized just how true that sentiment is.

In any project, there is a delicate balance between those three factors: Quality, Price, and Speed.  And it seems true that at any time we can only really get two of the three - assuming the service provider doesn't want to give away their time and effort.

Seriously, though, we really do see a definite correlation between Quality, Price, and Speed.  If a client wants High Quality and a Low Price, they will have to sacrifice a bit on completion time.  Likewise, if completion time is of great importance, the client will have either sacrifice on quality or pay extra.  And if they need it tomorrow and don't have much of a budget, the quality of the project will certainly not be worthy of the provider's portfolio.

No one is immune from this law: even my band.  I build our web-sites (duh), and we that means that we get a great quality:price ratio.  But high quality + low price = slow completion time (speed).  I showed the guys the mockups back in December.  The site still isn't built.  Whereas my freelance clients can have a site built  in 3-6 weeks, and in my day-job, I'll turn a mock-up into a simple site in a few days, or a complicated site in a week or so.  Granted, I work full time, play in a band on a regular basis, host trivia nights weekly, have freelance clients for whom I work on the rest of the nights.  So, yeah, a site that I do for free, even if I am the benefactor, isn't gonna get done very quickly.

So now I wonder, is there some sort of 'law' they teach in schools about the correlation between quality, price, and speed?  Does it already have a name?  Like The Law of You-Can't-Always-Get-What-You-Want.  Have studies been done to determine the weight that each of the three factors contributes to the overall model?  More importantly, why do I care so much???