#12a2: Time, money, and quality are competing factors (to the detriment of quality).

Production is constrained by three competing factors: time, money, and quality. You cannot optimise for all three at one: time and money, for example, cannot both be minimised while quality is maximised.

In a business environment, this relationship drives poor quality output. Given a fixed timeline and a resource-constrained team, quality necessarily suffers.

This also explains, in part, why time pressures leads to faster, but not better, work — speed comes at the cost of quality.

Related: 12a