There Is No Iron Triangle In Project Management
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There is no Iron Triangle in Project Management. In PM we learn the holy trinity of the triple constraint, the concept that we are operating within borders, and that those borders are interdependent. Oh yeah, and "triple" or "triangle" indicates that there are three. Although the image is powerful to instruct, it is plain false. There are more than three types of constraints. Environmental, law, physical to name just a few in addition to things like time and money.
Photography by Jef Poskanzer.
The job of a Project Manager is to guide a project towards the desired goal respecting those borders. The difficulty lies in the fact that this is always a trade off. If more has to be created, you either need more time or more money. Both increase the cost. Or if we paint the wall blue this week, the same people cannot spent their time on fixing the sink. Project Management is a profession of trade offs and decisions.
Tom Gilb and Mark Maier present in their paper "Managing Priorities: A Key To Systematic Decision Making" a solid foundation on how this could be done.
In their view every requirement to product or process of the project can be expressed within some kind of metric. As a value on a natural or constructed scale.
"All the requirement types can be specified simultaneously as target levels (levels we aim to get to) and constraint levels (levels we are warned to avoid). As a simple analogy, consider room temperature: we aim for just right, and avoid too hot or too cold."
"A constraint is a specification that should be met, otherwise certain definable negative consequences will follow. Constraints cannot be absolute, because the cost of respecting the constraint can exceed the negative consequence in the overall value schemes of the authoritative stakeholders."
By placing all requirements in the same league, priorities can be assigned to all aspects without getting the idea of comparing lemons and oranges.
"Priority is relative right of a requirement to the utilization of limited (or scarce) resources."
It will guide the Project Manager and the authorized stakeholders in making decisions how to allocate to resources. A desired goal is needed for a project to ultimately judge trade offs against.
The paper provides a clear linkage between requirements, constraints, priorities and the allocation of scarce resources.
What more does a PM want?
Download here the first part of my book "Surprise! Now You're A Software Project Manager"
There Is No Iron Triangle In Project Management
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