FBC – 39 – The Bermuda Triangle Of Goods and Services

Today we are going to cover the infamous speed price quality triangle. The Bermuda Triangle Of Goods and Services! This will help you make better decisions Image of the triangle:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3g9z097hz3k7qzn/project-management-triangle.jpg?dl=0

Funny Slogan:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4rn5zuog8kfvtfx/Good-Cheap-Fast.jpg?dl=0

So I'm going to talk to you about the “Speed – Price – Quality Triangle”.

Okay I'm going to develop that. Before that I’ll just give you the background story of a problem I had at my villa with my water pump. So the problem with the pump is that in the beginning, instead of investing in something good, the landlord invested in something quite shitty.

And while instead of buying a new pump that would have been better, he kept fixing it and fixing it and fixing it. And one thing I realize today is that so there was a small mechanism on the pump that kept breaking. So we changed that five times. But something I realized is that we actually changed the pump twice before, but always they replaced it with the exact same pump.

It is very important for you guys. You know sometimes you think about your budget. You don't see long term. Right? So you basically look at “oh you know what? I can save 10 bucks. Let me get the cheapest one” and the cheapest one, most of the time sucks right. And then afterwards you have to spend way more money fixing it and you will have headaches and stress instead of investing a little bit more.

So that's when I thought about this speed price quality triangle because this is something that's used in product management. So if you've done a little bit of product management you know what I'm talking about and if you don't then it's a very good exercise. It makes a lot of sense.

It's just that we don't usually think in those terms but there is a graphic representation of it. So I put an image on there. There’s a link, so if you click on the link you should be able to see the image.

The Bermuda Triangle Of Goods and Services

So the image is basically three converging circles. So part of these this circle will overlap. OK. And it basically tells you what you can expect based on what you're looking for. So there is speed that there is cost and there is quality and the general rule is that you can only have two of them. You can't have everything. In life you can't have everything. And based on the two that you choose, the result will be very different. OK.

So the first thing is let's say you want something fast and something cheap. OK. So the two circles that are overlapping means that if you want something fast but you want it for like a cheap price it's going to be poor quality. There is absolutely no way that you can have something of quality by being like the lowest price possible and getting it the next day. It just makes sense.

People get outraged when you give them a price. You hope because they want something quality and fast and they do. Well I can't do that. If you want something fast and cheap then, well I'm going to deliver something low quality.

All right then for example if you want something fast and good quality what do you think it's going to be? Well something fast and good quality is going to be expensive. Because think about it. If let's say someone's providing a service for you. That person has other clients as well.

So if you want something fast and you want the good quality they basically have to take all their best people and put them on your project, and disregard the other projects because you want it. You want it tomorrow and for that you're paying for the speed. Then you know what you're paying for the speed and the quality. In that case then well don't be surprised if you're charged more.

If you want some quality and you want it cheap, it's going to be slow. That's how it works right. So always have that in mind when you're doing something and when you making your choices as well you know sometimes you know it's better to pay something a bit more and have it fast than to wait or to pay something like super low quality and then having to maintain afterwards like it happened to me with the pump.