Faster, better, cheaper: why not pick all three?

• Author: Ward, Dan
• Position: Viewpoint - On military programs

Spend any time with (or as) an engineer, and you will probably hear the phrase "Faster, better, cheaper--pick two." Sometimes referred to as The Iron Triangle, this supposedly self-evident truism is repeated with great regularity among technologists, program managers and engineers, usually to justify the extensive amount of time and money expended on large, high-tech projects.

Unfortunately, the idea that we can't make simultaneous improvements in a project's cost, schedule and performance does not get a lot of critical analysis, even among people who do critical analysis for a living. When presented with the Pick Two concept, technical professionals who would normally insist on reviewing hard data before reaching conclusions inexplicably hear it, believe it and join in the chorus. This idea becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as project leaders make unnecessary tradeoffs, then conclude such tradeoffs were inevitable. Thus is conventional wisdom born.

The funny thing about the Pick Two mantra is that it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. The even funnier thing is that it gets so little scrutiny in the first place. For example, many people write off NASA's experiment with faster-better-cheaper in the 1990s as if it was an embarrassing flop, but when pressed, precious few can say what exactly NASA attempted or accomplished under that banner. To help remedy that, let's look at the numbers.

According to Howard McCurdy's book "Faster, Better, Cheaper/' NASA launched 16 major missions between 1992 and 1999. Far from backyard science projects, these missions were some of the most challenging things NASA ever attempted, including missions to Mars, to the moon, several Earth-orbiting satellites and even an asteroid rendezvous.

Were these missions any good? Well, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) project travelled 2 billion miles, intercepted the asteroid Eros, collected 10 times more data than anticipated, then glided to a smooth landing on Eros' surface despite not being designed as a lander--the first time such a maneuver had ever been attempted. I would call that a win.

Similarly, the Pathfinder mission to Mars was designed to last less than one month, but it went on for three months, collected 17,000 images and was one of NASA's proudest moments of the decade. It is worth noting that Mars is fiendishly difficult to visit. Despite making 19 attempts, the Russians never reached the Red Planet. Not only did the Pathfinder team put cutting-edge...