The iron cross

Projects are constraint by several physical aspects and the managers must understand them well to draw and achieve the project goal.

The fundamental physics of all software projects obey an unassailable trade-off called the Iron Cross of project management. These factors are: good, fast, cheap, and done. Managers can only pick any of three and cannot have the fourth. If your project is good, fast and cheap, you will never make it done. You can finish a project fast and cheap, then it will be no good.

In reality, a good project manager must understand deeply the coefficients of these four factors. A project will be driven to be good enough, fast enough, cheap enough, and done as much as necessary. The role of a good project manager is to handle the coefficients on these attributes rather than trying to achieve 100% on them.

These attributes can be called in more technical term: Bugget/Cost, Timeline/Schedule, Quality, Scope/Feature.

“If you don’t care about quality, you can meet any other requirement” – Gerald M. Weinberg