Iron Triangles: Powerful Tools for Analyzing Trade-Offs in AI Product Development

The "iron triangle" framework from project management can be adapted to analyze trade-offs in AI product development. This concept is explored through two distinct models for the design and operational phases. The design-time model balances feature scope, development cost, and time to market, illustrating how project constraints affect one another. A separate run-time model addresses the trade-offs faced by users, specifically between response quality, inference cost, and latency. The article presents minimal mathematical formulas for both triangles and discusses potential extensions to account for factors like non-linear productivity and variable scaling costs.