On the use and abuse of Technology and its Management from the perspective of an academic at UCL specialising in Project Management, Systems Engineering and Space Science/Technology.

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Why is it a triangle?

You know: time, cost, quality. Pick any two.

But why three? And not four points?

It could be because :
- jokes use triplets
- it's the next paradigm after Dualism
- it's just a verbal construct used in marketing

This is serious because something better could be in the fog, waiting. Like an integrated cost/quality metric. Or something.

There's a rambling thread on Jason Kottke's blog about this. Numerous forgotten-their-college-philosophy types and over-reductionist engineers pull and push at the question without its centre moving very much. It's even so long it reaches repetition point, but don't let that put you off. You know: Funny, Informative, Short. Pick any two. Or something like that.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

How about 4 points on a tetrahedron taking in Scope (of requirements)? Time boxed work packages, where quality is maintained, cost (resource) is limited and deliveries are made on the due date by only including features that can be achieved in the time available. e.g Programmes with a regular release schedule. (Nigel)