The project management triangle
It is likely that you have come across the “Project Management” or “Triple Constraint” triangle at some point in your project management journey. This triangle outlines the three base constraints that are at play in any project. If you think about, all three of these constraints pair with a project manager’s overall goal when delivering a project:
Scope is concerned with your project itself. What do you have to do? What are your tasks? What goals need to be accomplished? A scope is often fully refined before your project begins and is understood by all stakeholders to avoid future issues. You must determine the time and cost required to fulfill the demands of this scope, but sometimes it can change. You can experience scope creep during the project If the client changes their minds about what they want. If not managed properly, either the time or costs has to budge.
Everything takes time. Each task, each meeting, each process. How long these take can vary, but a primary determinant is the number and expertise of resources assigned to them (your costs). The amount of time you need is ultimately determined by a projects scope. By implementing a project management plan you can ensure a projects scope is fully outlined and an informed timeline is created. By completing a project schedule or time management plan you can help to ensure you are on task. At the end of the day, your ultimate time goal is to meet the deadline.
The cost of a project is explicitly tied to scope. A client will give you a budget, and it is your job in the project management planning process to work out if it is doable. It is only on the very rare occasion that a budget changes during a project, so making sure you have this right is paramount. At the end of the day, you have to get done what was promised but on the budget that was agreed upon.
With quality comes cost. If you client has a certain expectations or quality requirements, this will affect the project cost constraint directly. If this is known, your projects costs should reflect this accurately.
The likes of tools, equipment, software, and materials that will be used during are project are considered project resources, and project team members are considered human resources, and both are project constraints respectively. Effectively these cover who and what is needed to complete your project.
The resources available to you will determine what and when things can be completed. For example, a lack of skilled team members will likely drag out times, or a new software requirement will increase cost and require time to learn.
When it comes to project management, you will often hear the terms constraints, assumptions and risks being thrown about on a regular basis. Although often banded together, it is important to note that they are not the same thing. So how do they differ? We already know what constraints are, so let’s look a little deeper into the remaining terms.
We would all have heard at some point in our careers that assumptions are bad. We shouldn’t assume because it makes an “ass out of u and me.” But the truth is, assumptions need to be made in certain circumstances due to incomplete information or the need to keep things moving. So what are they? In simple terms, assumptions are factors that we believe to be true, although they are not confirmed to be true.
In fact, we make assumptions everyday. Consider when you woke up this morning. The time you left for work would be a calculation based on your assumptions on what the traffic would be like and what stops you would need to take along the way. Naturally, there is always the risk that you get to late work because perhaps the traffic was worse than you assumed or you didn't realise you needed to stop for petrol.
Assumptions add risk to a project as it is possible they will turn out to be false. If no risk is involved, you aren’t dealing with an assumption. Obviously, the more informed the assumption the better, but we are still playing with unknowns, so dome degree of risk will still exist. Assumptions can end up impacting any point in your project, so it is important to document and analyse them.
Risks aren't restricted to just assumptions. By definition, a project risk is an uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has an affect on at least one project objective. With assumptions, we will have some idea of the risk that results if they are not proved true and whether these will be positive or negative. However, other risks may come out of nowhere.
This is where risk managements is key. As part of the project management plan, risk management provide the opportunity to think about and document all foreseeable risks and potential problems. Obviously unknowns can be missed, but risk management also allows you to put in place preventative measure to manage, contain and reduce the risks that you are familiar with, helping to keep your project on track.
When we deal with constraints, we are dealing with fixed conditions or limits on what we can and cannot do in a projects. We explicitly know what they are. When we deal with risks and assumptions, to a certain extent we are dealing with the unknown. We may not no a risk exists until it occurs during a project, we may know one exists but we don't know when or if it will appear, or we may be confident in our assumptions but we don’t know if or when we will be proved wrong.
The important thing to realise here is that the resulting effect of all of these can be mitigated with proper planning and preparation. Obviously planning for what we know is a little easier, such as constraints, but if you have thoroughly documented and analysed these throughout previous projects you will be well informed. You will know what impact they have on a project, where they might appear, and suitable strategies to deal with these.
We now know what project constraints are, but how do they really impact our projects? Let’s look at a couple of examples, but before we start there is one thing we need to understand. Project constraints are generally considered as somewhat mutually exclusive. Let’s use the project management triangle as an example, it is assumed that making a change to one constraint will affect one or both of the others, a trade-off if you will. For example, increasing the scope of the project is likely to require more time and money. Let’s look at some more examples:
1. Building and construction
Halfway through the construction of a residential apartment building, an unexpected budget cut is imposed on your project by the developers after unfavourable conditions become apparent in the housing market.
Impact: Scope is cut, quality is reduced, and the schedule is pushed back so that cheaper resources can be found. The most significant constraint in this case is the cost (the money the developers are willing to spend).
During a software development project, your customer increases the scope. The client asks for additional features to added to the software after learning about what a competitor has on offer. The additional features are necessary in order to compete.
Impact: The budget and schedule increase as a result of pushing up the final delivery date. More people are added to minimise disruption to the project schedule, thereby increasing the project's overall cost. The most significant constraint in this case is scope (features of the software).
During a project to create a new product brand, your client as that the launch date is brought forward two weeks to coincide with a major industry show that is approaching and they want to launch their new product to the public.
Impact: Costs increase as more people are added to meet the new deadline. Certain marketing collateral that was being generated in conjunction with the brand are postponed to reduce delivery time and meet the new lunch date. The most significant constraint in this case is time (project schedule).
In each of these cases it is the project manager the needs to re-balance the other factors to deal with the new project constraint and keep the customer happy. As we can see, the old adage that you can only pick two from fast, cheap, or good holds true. Known as the “pick two’ principle, when given three desired qualities or expectations, it is likely only two can co-exist. In most cases, a project manager will be responsible for weighing one constraint against another to reach the best result.
First things first, it is important to understand that constraints will always exist. Each project you have will inevitably be a little different, so they constraints that you face will also not remain constant. The key to managing your project constraints and having a successful project is transparency.
To achieve transparency, every project team members and stakeholders should be kept informed, priorities should be set, and everybody should fully understand the project objectives. This is particularly important for managing high level constraints such as organisational culture, stakeholder buy in etc., any constraint that is at the human level.
For resource based constraints, official steps and processes to manage these are a little more explicit. For instances where constraints such as cost, resources, time, and scope need to be wrangled in, consider implementing some of the following techniques:
Through understanding where your project can and cannot “bend”, preparing for constraints accordingly, and actively monitoring and acting upon them, you will be better informed to make the right decisions and a deliver a successful project.
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