There has been a lot of activity about the so called “Iron Triangle” in the blogosphere of late. And one of my favorite metaphors resurfaced during the conversations.

You can have [it] good, fast, cheap, pick any two.

I first heard the phrase from a co-worker years ago. (Thanks Damon!) And it has proven true over and over. Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror has been writing a series of blog posts about development issues in general. He has an excellent post called “The Iron Stool” Which takes the Good, Fast, Cheap metaphor and converts it to Time, Resources, Functionality.

He adds what he calls an “unstated” fourth element which is Quality and results when Time, Resources and Functionality are evenly balanced. However we all know that such perfect world combinations rarely happen. Also the metaphors, all of them, don’t always hold water in reality.

Agile technologies and other advances can significantly reduce the Time part of the equation without sacrificing Resources and Functionality or Quality. When they are properly applied. And there lies the proverbial rub.

Any way, go read the post, and the comments. It’s well worth the read.

Cheers,

Robert Porter