You have to take the context in to account and then it makes more sense.
For example: unskilled labour used to be essentially free. In that case good and cheap meant either training someone (slow) or finding someone who already did it as a hobby (slow because they are hard to find then don’t prioritize your project).
Similarly: the culture it was created in didn’t value “personal time” so doing it yourself over time with a minimal cash budget was considered cheap. Now we’re all pretty familiar with opportunity costs and paying ourselves for sustainability.
Personally, while I feel like this triangle does show it’s age a bit it still serves as an excellent reminder when Those In Charge are trying to justify convincing themselves that they can have all three. Thankfully just that checkin has multiplied more than a few invoices so that there’s enough budget for quality.
For example: unskilled labour used to be essentially free. In that case good and cheap meant either training someone (slow) or finding someone who already did it as a hobby (slow because they are hard to find then don’t prioritize your project).
Similarly: the culture it was created in didn’t value “personal time” so doing it yourself over time with a minimal cash budget was considered cheap. Now we’re all pretty familiar with opportunity costs and paying ourselves for sustainability.
Personally, while I feel like this triangle does show it’s age a bit it still serves as an excellent reminder when Those In Charge are trying to justify convincing themselves that they can have all three. Thankfully just that checkin has multiplied more than a few invoices so that there’s enough budget for quality.