Focus on value

Let’s say you’re in the middle of constructing a building that must be finished by a certain deadline to be used for an event. However, your latest forecast shows that you will be two months late, which is completely unacceptable. You have two main options:

1. Lower quality to the minimum acceptable level to make work faster and deliver on time.
2. Spend more money to add resources to the project, make it faster, and deliver on time.

Which one would you choose?

We can’t answer the question properly with this information, because we don’t know why we’re doing this project! If our goal is to improve our reputation and enter a new market, we can’t lower quality because that would defeat the purpose, and so our option is probably to spend more money. On the other hand, if we’re doing the project only to earn money, it’s probably a good idea to select the first option and lower quality to its minimum acceptable level.