23 lines
1.3 KiB
Markdown
23 lines
1.3 KiB
Markdown
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title: The Iron Triangle, or "Pick Two"
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---
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# The Iron Triangle, or "Pick Two"
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Software development is a series of tradeoffs between features implemented, the quality of the features, and how long it takes to produce.
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But, no matter how much effort is put in, one cannot sustainably maximize all three of these without increasing the cost of the project.
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For software development, often cost is directly related to the number of people assigned to and working on a project.
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This concept is often summed up as "Pick Two: Quality, Speed, Features".
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This relationship between quality, features, speed, and cost is illustrated by imagining a triangle with a fixed volume
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with the volume being quality.
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One can increase speed to implement and the features, but quality will suffer if cost is unchanged,
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keeping the volume of the triangle the same.
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Frequently cost is assumed to be constant because in most cases the cost is fixed and there is no budget to add more people
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nor are there people available for transfer from other projects.
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----
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## Sources:
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* [The Broken Iron Triangle Anti-Pattern](http://www.ambysoft.com/essays/brokenTriangle.html) Classic essay by [Scott Ambler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Ambler)
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