Great, Fast, Cheap

If you’ve spent any amount of time around the design or development world, you’ve no doubt heard and/or seen a version of the diagram below. The theory is that we can offer our deliverables in three categories: Great, Fast, or Cheap. The client can choose only two of these options.

I’ve worked for companies and I’ve worked for myself (freelance), and I can attest that both companies and individual clients fall into the trap of wanting all their projects to be great, fast AND cheap. That can be quite a hurdle for a designer or developer to overcome.

The idea for us, as designers and developers, shouldn’t be one of limiting our clients (or bosses) to a choice. Instead, we should be managing their expectations from the beginning. We can not lean to the requests of a client for perfection all the while having them expect the project to be delivered in record time. These discussions should come at the start of a project, and continue throughout based on the project road map.

The longer I work in web design and development, the more I can both relate to and hate the notion that our work is lumped into the Great, Fast, Cheap tradeoff theory. It is funny to look at this diagram and relate to the struggles we all feel, but the reality is our clients aren’t all the same, our projects aren’t all the same, and a one size diagram doesn’t fit all.

So look at each client and each project individually. Work with your clients and try to manage their expectations for the end deliverable they want. It will make you feel more confident and comfortable, it will make your client feel like part of the process, and it will make you both feel better about the final outcome.