Cheap Short-Living Objects

{
  "id": "TRIZ-27",
  "title": "Cheap Short-Living Objects",
  "intent": "Reduce risk and cost by using temporary, disposable, or easily replaceable elements instead of durable ones.",
  "triz_principle": {
    "number": 27,
    "name": "Cheap Short-Living Objects",
    "definition": "Replace expensive, long-lasting objects with cheaper, short-lived ones."
  },
  "problem_understanding": {
    "core_contradiction": "We want reliability and control, but long-lived solutions accumulate risk, rigidity, and maintenance cost.",
    "why_this_hurts": "Permanent solutions attract hacks, exceptions, and hidden dependencies that are hard to remove later.",
    "typical_signals": [
      "temporary solutions that become permanent",
      "long-lived environments or configurations nobody dares to change",
      "high cost to clean up experiments",
      "fear of rollback because impact is too big"
    ]
  },
  "solution_logic": {
    "core_idea": "Design components and processes to be temporary and disposable by default.",
    "key_rule": "If something is likely to change or fail, make it cheap to replace.",
    "how_it_resolves_the_contradiction": "Risk is limited in time and scope, enabling faster experimentation and cleaner evolution."
  },
  "application_patterns": {
    "consulting": [
      "time-boxed initiatives instead of open-ended programs",
      "pilot decisions with automatic expiration dates",
      "temporary task forces instead of permanent committees"
    ],
    "software_engineering": [
      "ephemeral environments for testing",
      "short-lived feature branches",
      "throwaway prototypes instead of over-engineered PoCs"
    ],
    "architecture": [
      "immutable infrastructure with easy replacement",
      "stateless services that can be recreated anytime",
      "canary components with planned removal"
    ],
    "enterprise_sap": [
      "temporary MDG rules for migration phases",
      "short-lived workflows for exceptional periods",
      "sandbox systems instead of permanent special clients"
    ]
  },
  "anti_patterns": [
    "temporary solutions without clear expiration",
    "cheap components used in critical long-term paths",
    "lack of cleanup ownership"
  ],
  "usage_guidance": {
    "use_when": [
      "uncertainty is high",
      "experimentation is required",
      "long-term commitment is risky"
    ],
    "do_not_use_when": [
      "stability over long periods is required",
      "replacement cost is actually high"
    ]
  },
  "diagnostic_questions": [
    "Which elements are expected to change soon?",
    "What could be made disposable instead of permanent?",
    "How can replacement be automated?"
  ],
  "example": {
    "before": "A pilot solution becomes a long-term dependency with no clear owner.",
    "after": "The pilot is explicitly temporary and replaced or removed after evaluation."
  },
  "meta": {
    "schema": "dkharlanau.dataset.byte",
    "schema_version": "1.1",
    "dataset": "TRIZ-bytes",
    "source_project": "cv-ai",
    "source_path": "TRIZ-bytes/TRIZ-27.json",
    "generated_at_utc": "2026-02-03T14:33:32+00:00",
    "creator": {
      "name": "Dzmitryi Kharlanau",
      "role": "SAP Lead",
      "website": "https://dkharlanau.github.io",
      "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/dkharlanau"
    },
    "attribution": {
      "attribution_required": true,
      "preferred_citation": "Dzmitryi Kharlanau. “Cheap Short-Living Objects” (dataset bytes). CC BY-NC 4.0. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18862098. https://dkharlanau.github.io/datasets/TRIZ-bytes/TRIZ-27.json"
    },
    "license": {
      "name": "Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)",
      "spdx": "CC-BY-NC-4.0",
      "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"
    },
    "links": {
      "website": "https://dkharlanau.github.io",
      "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/dkharlanau",
      "repository": "https://github.com/dkharlanau/dkharlanau-datasets"
    },
    "contact": {
      "preferred": "linkedin",
      "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/dkharlanau"
    },
    "canonical_url": "https://dkharlanau.github.io/datasets/TRIZ-bytes/TRIZ-27.json",
    "created_at_utc": "2026-02-03T14:33:32+00:00",
    "updated_at_utc": "2026-03-04T11:23:27+00:00",
    "provenance": {
      "source_type": "chat_export_extraction",
      "note": "Extracted and curated by Dzmitryi Kharlanau; enriched for attribution and crawler indexing."
    },
    "entity_type": "triz_byte",
    "entity_subtype": "",
    "summary": "Reduce risk and cost by using temporary, disposable, or easily replaceable elements instead of durable ones.",
    "doi": {
      "concept": "10.5281/zenodo.18862098",
      "version": "10.5281/zenodo.18862097",
      "repository": "https://github.com/dkharlanau/dkharlanau-datasets"
    }
  }
}