Trick Question - "good but expensive" vs "quick and dirty"

Your project manager has asked you to estimate the difference in cost between the "good but expensive", "quick and dirty" path or solution!

What should you do?

Steve McConnells answer in this blogentry is that you should ask three more questions:

1.How much it will cost to backfill the good path after you've already gone down the quick path?
2.If you choose the quick path now, how much does that slow down other work until you're able to retrofit the good path?
3.Is there a path that is quicker than the good path and that won't affect the rest of the system?

Steves Bottom line: When facing the prospect of taking on technical debt, be sure to generate more than two design options.

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