The Triple Constraints: You Only Get Two

Early in my career, I had the unique opportunity to work with Dr. Bob Graham, author of Project Management as if People Mattered and an early guru of software project management. At the time I was more cynical than I am now about ‘gurus’, but I still had the deepest respect for this guy for many reasons. Here are the top three:

1. He never lectured; he taught by telling stories and making analogies
2. When he started his career he was programming on punch cards—so he had street cred, but he was also one of the first who recognized that software projects needed Project Managers
3. Whenever we worked late and went to dinner, he always ordered good wine

An IBM Punch Card: The UI on these things is AMAZING!

I learned a lot from Dr. Bob, but one lesson that has stuck with me is the lesson of the “triple constraint” of projects. Dr. Bob would say that everyone wants projects cheap, fast and good, but his stance was that you could only have two. Later in his career, Dr. Bob changed “Good” to “Features.” In other words, you can build something cheap and fast with only a few features—but if you want a lot of features, you’ll have to give up something else. Quality becomes a tug-of-war between “good” and “features.”

I hadn’t thought about Bob in a while, but I was reminded of his wisdom when I found Dan Maginn’s article on www.good.is last month. While he may be preaching against the American trend of “bigger is better” he is also promoting the architect’s version of the triple constraint. If you want it big and good, it ain’t gonna be cheap. If you want it cheap, think smaller—and smaller isn’t always worse.

Now think about what you do and read this quote:

“We want so bad to believe that we can have it all—a cool design with lots of space, for not a lot of money. But we can’t have it all.”

Replace “…with lots of space..” with whatever third constraint your projects are constantly struggling with… “in a short period of time” or “with a ton of features”… Dr. Bob started this conversation years ago. Guess what? You still only get two. No amount of brilliance, technology or vision will fix this formula. You only get two.

As Depicted Over At ProjectManagementBlog

This is why:

• We were OK with the price tag when JFK said he wanted a man on the moon in ten years
• We’re fine with it when cheap cars don’t have heated seats and navigation systems
• You see the occasional client who hired the lowest bidder on a big project with a short timeline suddenly running around saying, “Can you fix this for me? Money is no object!”

Russ has written about Kristina Halvorson on this blog in the past. In her new book, Content Strategy for the Web, she often references this concept when speaking about the battles all content ‘owners’ have over making their stuff as prominent as possible. If you give in to everyone, you get something that’s huge, difficult to maintain, time consuming and, in the end, expensive. In other words, you fail on all three constraints instead of volunteering to give up one. Exactly what Dr. Bob told me over that bottle of wine.

The Cost of Not Focusing on UX? $170M

The Think Brownstone design team has been closely following Mint.com for almost 2 years now. From the very beginning we’ve been enamored of its “sexy” design; intuitive, clean, fun and free. We’ve been equally impressed by its evolution – each new iteration being better and smarter.

We’ve told our clients and prospects about the site and encouraged them to sign up. Most of them did, and it was always an eye-opening encounter for them. In fact, in a lot of ways it was a great proof-of-concept for us – it helped clients understand the importance of a great user experience and helped streamline the path we would take with them. It was a concrete example to use when warning them that if they didn’t pay serious attention to their users’ needs, one day two guys working out of their studio apartment might come along with a competitive product that would steal market share – market share that they were already fighting to hold on to.

Sure, that competitive product might not have as many features, but it would instead succeed based on the tried and true 80/20 rule:  80% of your users employ about 20% of your features; so instead of giving them every bell and whistle you can possibly think of (jack of all trades, master of none), carefully identify what that core 20% is and do it better than ANYONE else. That makes that 80% of your users (at least) very happy, who tell their friends, and before long the amount of users that make up that 80% has grown significantly. It comes down to this: all else being equal, users will pick that which is most intuitive, simple, and yes, pretty/fun. As mentioned earlier, figuring out how to make it “free” for them also ain’t too shabby.

Earlier this week, on the second anniversary of launching, Mint.com announced that Intuit (makers of the behemoth Quicken, among others) would acquire them for $170 Million. As the saying goes “if you can’t beat them, buy them” – and the folks at Intuit are likely thanking their lucky stars that they managed to grab hold of that nimble little nuisance before Mint.com completely left them in the dust.

The real gem in all of this is the fact that Mint.com made something exponentially better by making it simpler.  We should probably get that printed up on t-shirts or something. Congrats, Mint.com – stay cool.  Please.

The Piazza At Schmidts GETS IT

OK, the last of our summer vacations is over (mine), and it’s time to get some new thoughts and ideas up on ye olde blog! So here’s something that has been on my mind for a few weeks now…

Our group of extended colleagues and friends, much like yours I’d expect, has been having an ongoing debate about the pros and cons of the different types of online communities available to us. That’s not my direct focus with this posting, but suffice to say that I have a love/hate relationship with them that continues to ebb and flow weekly. One thing that doesn’t waver for me though is that even when I’m in “advocate mode” they still just don’t rival actual, real, tangible communities that you can get up off your nerdy computer butt and go walk to.

Piazza Images Courtesy of GoPhila.com

However, I’d suggest that one of the reasons online communities have gained such a stronghold (and I’m quite sure I’m not the first), is that many traditional communities have gone the way of the dodo thanks to poor urban (and suburban) planning that has given preference to sprawl, strip malls, auto traffic over pedestrians, and the relentless focus on quantity over quality that started plaguing us going back to the 1950’s.

I know that other areas of the country have made strides against this trend, especially in recent years, but in our stomping grounds of the greater Philadelphia area there haven’t been enough. Sure, we’ve got some great squares in the more glamorous parts of town like Rittenhouse – but there’s an elitist quality to what surrounds them that makes it feel a bit inauthentic. You just wouldn’t expect to stumble upon Rittenhouse on a mid-summer afternoon and see an incredibly diverse group of folks sporting big smiles and un-self-consciously dancing together with their kids and pets to live music. This, however, is standard fare at the recently opened Piazza at Schmidts in the continuously evolving and improving Northern Liberties section of the city.

My wife and I stopped by earlier in the summer when a good friend of mine happened to be in town promoting his new album and had a performance scheduled in the square as part of one of the regular afternoon shows that are staged there – free of charge. This time it happened to be one of the fantastic shows organized by Sundae Philadelphia – so we’re not talking about puppet shows here; this is the real deal. In fact, here’s a video filmed the day we were there:

We had no idea what to expect, but stumbled upon what she called “a little utopia”, the kind of place we fantasized about bringing up our kids around.  We marveled at the huge open-air plaza with new apartments atop rent-controlled artist studios, funky shops, market stands, and affordable cuisine (including killer pretzels and bubble-tea right next to fancier restaurants) – filled with people of all ages, races, hairstyles and lifestyles strolling around happily interacting. Then at the end of the plaza was the giant 400 square foot year-round LCD panel that is used to project everything from “Family Movie Night” during the week to the Phillies games – with the stage below pulsing with fabulous musicians from around the world being joined by locals dancing on roller skates and playing with hula hoops.

At The Piazza with Nickodemus

Yeah, it was all “peace and love” but in a very urban, modern way – and it was completely refreshing. There’s a lot of sensational media out there aimed at scaring the pants off you – that’ll keep you tuned in and the advertising money flowing – but by and large, people are awesome and it’s worth it to get out there and meet a few new ones every now and then. We honestly didn’t want to leave, and talked the whole way home about how this model might be applied to our own neighborhood, our work, online communities, and elsewhere. We also hoped out loud that what they’ve created over there is sustainable and will be supported by the city and the people who live in it. Maybe the climate is finally right for more Piazzas out there, breaking down superficial social boundaries and mirroring the same diversity found in friends lists and iTunes playlists in the “real” world.