Quality vs. Speed

Western culture has a very interesting dynamic of quality/speed. In the case of a boss/worker, the boss wants to have the project done as quickly as possible, but also as well as possible. The paradox is that quality and speed are connected together in the wrong way. The higher quality a job is, the more time it takes. Unfortunately the faster the job takes, the less quality can be expected of the job. In the software industry, a application that has a lot of bugs in it is said to have been rushed to sale.

When this paradox is understood by everybody involved, this isn't a problem; as the end result won't be an unpleasant surprise to anybody. Certainly, expecting to have bugs in your companies application only to find that your programmers pulled out an amazing bug-free app is always welcome. But when it is the opposite; that's when the problems come into play. When the boss orders that Customer support calls be closed faster in order to make his department look better, he is opening up a pandoras box for unhappy customers, as the support technicians will be forced to hang up on unfinished calls just to keep from getting in trouble for not solving the problem fast enough. The drop in quality is unexpected, and creates a tension that can only lead to trouble.

The key is to make sure that all parties involved understand what the quality/time ratio is, and how it will affect the product. YouTube content creators who want to create as many videos as possible often do this by posting a video where they explain how their videos will be a lower quality, but in return they will be able to create more of the videos, faster. Doing this helps to prevent the viewers from becoming upset over the lower quality.

Some examples of these posts can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?nomobile=1&v=I-kCRxhMZi4

This is a video where HuskyStarcraft is testing a new program to create videos of himself playing games. The quality of the videos would be lower, but at the same time, there would be no editing necessary to create the videos. This would allow him to create lots of videos, one after the other, and upload them to youtube. On top of all that, the new program has other features that make it an attractive alternative to the high quality videos that he had previously created.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?nomobile=1&v=WoJsNYEWwtQ

In this video X announces sweeping changes that are going to take place on his channel. His videos have always been very high quality in the past, and he had found it difficult to create videos due to the time required to create them at the quality that he wanted to. In this video, he discusses how he will have some videos that will have that same quality, but others will have a lower quality that will allow him to create the videos faster and with less stress. That means more videos in the end.

For both of these videos, they are doing their job of changing the viewers expectations to match what the creator plans. This is an important idea, because it allows for a realistic match between the consumers and the creators. Of course to prevent this from backfiring, you need to make sure that you follow through with what you promise. This makes it doubly important that you strive to know what your strengths are, and what you are good at.

Ironically what we think we want to do isn't always the same as what we are best at doing. So if we want to always take our time to get the highest quality, we may be surprised to find that we are much better at getting the job done quickly. A good way to test which kind of person you are is to play a time management game.

The game that I'm playing is called diner dash, by playfirst.

The games goal is to serve patrons of a restaurant diner. The more people eat, the higher your score will be. But the game also rewards you for the happiness of the patrons. The speed of the service is important, nobody wants to wait in line all day. But also the quality of service matters as well. When serving multiple patrons at the same time the player can receive combo points. This makes the game have three basic strategies. Playing slowly and concentrating solely on the quality of the dinner that the patrons have. Playing quickly and making sure that patrons never have to wait for long before they start eating, but at the cost of not being as happy with the meal. The last strategy is the middle ground. Trying to go for the combos when possible, but at the same time making sure that the line isn't getting too long.

What strategy are you best at? And which one would you prefer to play? Lets find out. If you have another time management game, fire it up, otherwise you can find diner dash at http://www.playfirst.com/game/dinerdash. Once you have gotten through the tutorial levels we can start.

We'll start with quality. By that I mean play a level while taking your time to make all of the actively eating patrons as happy as possible. This means making sure your combos are as maxed out as possible. This will also mean that the patrons in line will get quite upset as you aren't concentrating on speedy service. Play with this style for a few levels. Then sit back and rate how you did, and how fun it was. Give this a number between one and ten. For me I'll rate this an 8 (I was very successful, almost getting a perfect 10, but it was kind of boring. I give the gameplay a 7).

Then it's time to do the opposite. Play the next few levels while attempting to keep the restaurant moving as quickly as possible. This means that you won't get as many combo points, and each diner won't be as happy by the end of their meal. However, the patrons in line won't get nearly as upset as they won't have to wait as long. This style of gameplay is incredibly frantic and fast paced. There is always something that needs doing, and there are no breaks. To me the game is more fun to play, as there are no boring parts at all. My score was slightly lower though, a 7 while gameplay was a 9.

While it is more difficult, if not impossible to make each diner as happy as possible, the line will be kept smaller as more patrons are able to eat. This does have the benefit of having each diner start happier than with the slow, higher quality version.

What would happen if we interviewed some of the patrons of this restaurant? What would they say about the different styles employed? Obviously any patrons that were able to eat at the slow, but quality restaurant would claim that it was the best dining experience that they had ever had. The food was good, and they were always seated in a booth that they were comfortable with. However they might mention that the wait to eat was extremely long, and that offset the dining experience slightly. Some of the patrons would even argue that the restaurant was horrible because they never got to eat at all. Several people got fed up with the wait and abandoned the restaurant long before they would have been seated.

This is the core of the quality/speed conundrum. In this game it is easy to prioritize one over the other, as you are the manager and the worker. But in the real world things are not quite as cut and dry. There are precious few times when one of the traits completely dominates over the other one. Most of the times a balance has to be struck, to get the highest quality possible while at the same time speeding along as fast as possible.

Learning this balance, Ironically, doesn't require your speed to be fast already. In fact, if anything, the opposite is true. Being able to produce higher quality is more important. Then, once you know how to do a task without failing, you can begin to add speed into the equation.

Try it yourself, and remember to continually improve your speed and quality.