Whether or not you’re familiar with its name, “The Iron Triangle”, it’s likely that you’re familiar with the concept that’s been around for what seems like forever. It involves 3 basic desires that everyone hopes to obtain when looking for a product or service. Cheap, Fast, and Good.
While there are a few arguments out there that attempt to suggest that acquiring all 3 of these things in any one transaction is doable, we at F13 side with the reason this triangle exists in the first place. And, that is that any two of these three components are accessible at any one time, but you can’t have all three. The concept is well explained by business.com like this:
- Develop something quickly and of high quality, but it will be very costly to do
- Develop something quickly and cheaply, but it will not be of high quality
- Develop something of high quality and low cost, but it will take a long time.
You may ask, “If you figure we’ve all heard of this before then why write about it here?” My answer to that is simply that it bears reminding. We know it bears reminding because it is not uncommon for us to receive calls hoping that we can and will achieve all three even if “just this once”.
Let’s break each of the three bullets down and how they pertain to an architectural visualization project.
Number one – Creating a project quickly and making it look fabulous is not cheap. So, let’s say you give us a call and request a project that has a deadline that’s tough to manage if not virtually impossible. That not only means that you are asking us to work under extreme pressure and create results that we are proud of and represent your work, not just effectively, but so well that your marketing materials rock and your presentations blows everyone out of the water.
Now for the ‘but’. BUT, there’s a problem. We don’t generally sit around wondering where the next piece of work will come from. So, not only does someone need to get working immediately, but whoever is working on your project will need to work through the evenings and the nights, and before that can happen we need to shift work around in order to accommodate the last minute request, freeing up the guy that’s now got to cancel all of his post-work hour activities including sleep. All of this is the reason why the ‘quickly’ and ‘high quality’ deliverable is gonna cost you.
I should make the caveat here that sometimes deadlines requested are just too short, it doesn’t necessarily matter how much money you are willing to throw at them.
Number two – Creating a project fast and at a low cost automatically means it will not be good quality. Let’s go a step further here and suggest that it will be difficult to find a reputable company that would even be willing to do this. There are two reasons why. As I mentioned when discussing number 1 above, a good firm does not want its name attached to a piece of work floating around in the world that its not proud of because since sacrifices are made in order to meet a short deadline. Secondly, if a firm is willing to take on your offer with a short deadline and not charge you much for it you can guarantee that the quality you receive will be substandard or subpar.
Number three – Developing something of quality at a low cost will take a long time. This is the concept that doesn’t fly for us at F13. In fact, I would say that industry-wide this one would be excluded from the doable concepts above. Here’s why. If you want something of quality, giving us all the time in the world isn’t all of the sudden going to make your project an inexpensive endeavor. The ability to create something beautiful and architecturally accurate takes time (yes), but it also takes talent, knowledge, and expertise, and for that you’re going to have to pay. Fortunately, this isn’t a request we’ve ever been asked to meet.
Ideally, we recommend you give us enough time to produce amazing work at our average cost to you for doing that work. But, if and when backed into a corner (yes we do realize life isn’t always ideal), know that F13 will be forthcoming with you. We’ll listen, remain open and honest, and then present to you your options for meeting your goals.