We just almost didn’t buy a widget that saved us at least a dozen hours of coding in the first week. Because it was too cheap ($139). If it had been open-source/free, we’d have tried it in a heartbeat - investing three days of engineering time that costs me $1,000/day.

So let’s net that back: it’s perfectly reasonable to spend $3,000 of time to try to accelerate a project but only if you don’t have to spend $139 to do so.

What. The. Frack.

When I say it has saved us a dozen hours, I should be more clear: this widget saved not only the three days (24 hours) we put into making sure it did what it needed to do, but it at the end of the fourth day (8 hours), we’d finished a task that was scheduled for 6 days (48 hours). I’d say it saved us two days (16 hours) but we had to write a bunch of new test plans (4 hours) to make sure we got good coverage.

So this $139/investment saved us $1,500 (1.5 days @ $1,000/day). In a week.

That, my friends, is a good investment.

Oh, and we own the widget now, so I’m sure when we next re-plan we can bring in a bunch of UI stuff, I betcha. Which saves even more money. And since the project will have more slack time, risk is lowered.

And we almost didn’t do this because we hesitated to spend $139.

Next team meeting maybe we’ll discuss giving everyone a budget, say $250, to buy software tools. Heck, you don’t have to find but one or two on a project. And since this one is clearly going to keep paying dividends, it’s probably “free” money.

Nota Bene: You may have noticed that I emphasized 8 hour days. That is because we believe that employees should go home unless the place is burning down. Nobody really puts in 8 hours, but if you push people towards that they may only work 10 and will be fresh when you really need a push.