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0 pointskoonsolo6y ago0 comments

Developers are your biggest cost, so I never understood why fast and cheap would be opposed to each other. And if you buy off the shelve, most of the time it's both faster and cheaper than building it yourself.

So I always felt that fast and cheap go hand in hand.

I think the triangle is:

- features

- quality

- cost (=both price & time)

Edit: I forgot to mention that you cannot just throw more engineers at a problem to make it go faster. There is such a thing as an optimal team size.

Another edit (sorry it's Friday evening here;)): The faster you can get it done, the cheaper it will be.

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2 comments · 2 top-level

OrangeMango6y ago

> Developers are your biggest cost

This is unlikely to be true. Bad decisions are your biggest cost.

An employee has a "return multiplier" - for every dollar you spend on them, what is the return to the business? Sometimes it is high. If so, the developer is very cheap. Sometimes is it low, or negative. If so, the developer is expensive.

Why would it be high or low? Part of that is developer skill, but mostly it is how well your organization runs itself and makes decisions.

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EdSharkey6y ago

We have to peg quality with rigorous testing or else cost (time spent) will be variable upwards to infinity (due to accumulation of untenable technical debt).

Therefore, if cost must be pegged due to limited time/funds and quality must be pegged due to existential risk then quantity/richness of features must float and be flexible.

All good product owners will learn this truth eventually.

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