Re^5: Make it good

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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Comment on Re^5: Make it good

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Re^6: Make it good by Tanktalus (Canon) on Feb 21, 2005 at 16:05 UTC
I think that almost proved my point about different people (management) looking at things differently. Others would look at the OV and determine that the ROI isn't going to be worth it if we continue throwing good money after bad. Depending on what acceptable ROI is to the company, and what $$$s are involved in the budget/time, it may no longer be worth continuing to spend money on a project, and instead focus on a new project with greater ROI by moving people to the new project. Perhaps for internal-use-only projects where the only ROI is increased employee productivity, continuing to spend on a late project makes sense. A lot of sense. For projects that result in off-the-shelf software, how you spend additional money and time may take on a different hue, especially if the project in question is not a critical aspect of a flagship product.	[reply]
Re^6: Make it good by DrHyde (Prior) on Feb 22, 2005 at 14:26 UTC
Often you can meet the deadline and budget if you reduce the scope. This means that you don't deliver what was originally specified - so by that measure you deliver something that doesn't work. However, management are often happy with something that delivers 95% - that works well enough - if it delivers on time.	[reply]