If you want to achieve a high quality product, and no matter what kind of product we are talking about, here are the basic ingredients you will need. Without one of them the task will be extremely difficult to accomplish if not impossible. I will assume at this point that we will take “vision” and “initiative” out of the equation, since without any of these two factors no product comes even to life.

Please note that in this article we will not talk about efficiency, or its relevance in the development process, so let’s keep that in mind and get right into the point.

A high quality product is a very controversial subject, since we could have numerous discussions about what quality is, for a start, and quality standards! Because let’s face it, what quality means for you, it might mean something else for other person.

So having that said, let’s get to the basics and see what we are missing. For any high quality product we will need four ingredients, skilled manpower, good tools, good materials and time, in that order of relevance.

The diagram in the image says it all, as you can see the combination of those four elements will drive you to achieve the goal of creating the best outcome possible. But let’s break these points down, and to do it so, let’s consider the scenario of creating a shoe.

Skilled manpower

The first asset you will need to get is qualified or skilled people. Without this element, as you can see in the diagram, your goal will just take far too much time.

Lets get back to our scenario… If you have the other three elements, but your team doesn’t have enough knowledge, with a lot of research and network contacts, you might eventually get there and end up with a good looking shoe on your hand but, and here is a big “but”, it will consume a lot of time, which obviously it’s unthinkable in today’s business reality.

Good tools

When it comes to tools we need, to create or produce anything, it’s a very similar problem you face as having no skilled manpower.

Lets see the scenario…You might have the right people around you, but if they don’t have the right tools, it will simply waste the precious time your company has, for example, time you will need to brand and marketing that shoe. I’m sure you can imagine how catastrophic this is, if you consider your competitors.

Good materials

Here we start getting more critical; you might have the right people on the job, with the right tools and with a lot of time to accomplish a task, if they don’t have good quality materials to work with, the result will never be as good as it could be.

In the shoe example, we could even say that it’s impossible to get a good looking shoe if you are working with poor quality materials and it doesn’t matter what you are able to do, it will still be an “ugly duck”.

Time

I can’t stress enough how important this factor is, it’s by far the most important element of them all.

So back to the shoe… When it comes to time, there are no miracles, you can have the most proficient people working on the case, with the best tools you can find and with the best materials available. If you don’t have the required time, it’s inevitable the grotesque result. As any other product, you need a minimum amount of time to create or develop it, everything under that specific time you will never be able to get that good looking shoe.

This scenario is pretty clear, only if you are able to combine these four basic elements, only then you can get that high quality product you are looking for.