Does it matter if, at the deadline, I'm hopelessly over budget and it still doesn't work yet? Or, at the end of the budget, I'm going to get it to work at the deadline, continuing the same course through money? Either way, you're still likely looking at a project getting killed. Just as likely as your scenario, I think, because given more time and budget, you might be able to take the deliverable and make it work.

If there is a business ordering to this, it's not transparently obvious to me. Different managers/corporations would treat each of the three failures (working, deadline, budget) differently. radiantmatrix's other goals aren't even on the same page as these three, but the ordering between these three is blurry to me.

Here's the way I look at it - budget and time are the same resource. Both are opportunity costs. You could've spent that money differently and you could've spent that time differently.

So, the question is which is more important - meeting your OV (opportunity-value) budget or delivering something that works? Well, it doesn't matter if the the OV budget is met if it doesn't work. If it does work, then it doesn't matter if you blew your OV budget because you have a working product that will start to generate additional OV.

Now, there is an argument about time-to-market, but that is just a modifier to your product's expected OV generation. Essentialy, either it works or it doesn't. You can't be somewhat pregnant.

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