Good, Cheap and Fast

Good, Cheap and Fast

A prioritization framework that helps you choose between good quality, low cost, and fast delivery in a project, making tradeoffs and focusing on what's most important.

What is Good, Cheap and Fast?

Good, Cheap and Fast is a project management and prioritization framework often used in business. It recognizes that in any project, there are inherent trade-offs between 3 key factors: quality, cost and speed. The slogan is that you can only realistically achieve 2 of these factors in a project. For example, you can have it good and cheap, but it won't be fast. Or you can have it fast and good, but it won't be cheap. The basic idea is that you must make intentional trade-offs and decide which 2 factors are most important for your needs.

The framework encourages conscious prioritization and decision making when planning a project rather than trying to maximize all factors. For example a manager may want to launch a marketing campaign both low-cost, high-quality and in a short timeframe. The Good, Cheap, Fast framework recognizes this is likely unrealistic. It pushes the manager to determine the most important factors for that specific campaign by asking questions like: is it more important to launch quickly at the expense of polish? Or do we want an extremely polished campaign even if it takes longer? By narrowing focus, managers can allocate resources appropriately.

Overall the Good, Cheap and Fast slogan serves as memorable mental model when embarking on new projects. It promotes limiting the scope, making tradeoffs, focusing energy on the vital few over trivial many, and ultimately delivers better outcomes.

Good, Cheap and Fast Features

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