it doesn’t matter what we do, three components are always involved: what we do, time we spent, and cost. Combination of them defines the result we have. Sometimes we intuitively manage our personal projects with this concept in mind. At other occasions we don’t. In latter case things start falling apart and we get frustrated and discouraged.
When cleaning a room we intuitively know that if we want to cut time then quality will suffer. On a surface room still will look clean. Yet there will be dust behind furniture, on upper shelves, etc. Oftentimes that’s fine because we wanted to cut time.
When booking a hotel, usually we would spend time to cut the cost. Intuitively we know that if we don’t spend time on research then staying in high quality hotel means spending more money on hotel itself.
But when it comes to projects this ability to digest an interconnection between scope, time, and cost disappears. It seems like it works for a single task, but not for a list of tasks.
In project management this interconnection is called Project Management Triangle or Triple Constraint.
Managing projects is a part of my job for almost two decades now. Let take you through Project Management Triangle and show to use it for your advantage.
What is project management triangle?
In simple words scope is what needs to be done to have desired result, time is how much time we want to spend, and cost is how much money we are willing to spend.
When three of them are in balance then we fill comfortable working on the project (or task). When they are not, then bad things of different kinds start happening (e.g. frustration, stress, overwhelming, etc.).
How scope, time, and cost are related
First relationship is scope to time and cost. When scope increases, time or money must also increase. Larger project needs more time and/or more money.
Second relationship is between time and cost. When time needs to be cut then cost grows. When cost needs to be cut then more time is needed.
Unfortunately there is nothing we can do about these relationships besides acknowledging them and willing to follow them. There is no way to fundamentally break them. Project managers couldn’t find a way in past half a century.
Balancing triangle
Triangle is balanced when scope is equal to the combination of time and cost.
When you add scope at the same time you need to increase either time or cost.
When you cut time at the same time you need to either increase cost to keep same scope or decrease scope to keep same cost.
When you cut cost at the same time you need to either increase time to keep same scope or decrease scope to keep same time.
| Change | Action to Keep Balance |
|---|---|
| Scope ⬆ | Time ⬆ or Cost ⬆ |
| Time ⬇ | Cost ⬆ or Scope ⬇ |
| Cost ⬇ | Time ⬆ or Scope ⬇ |
As you can see balancing the triangle is pretty binary. On one hand that’s bad because we don’t have much options. On the other the rules are simple.
Occasional break throughs
Above I’ve said that we cannot fundamentally break triple constraint. However there is one thing that can in some cases make a difference. That’s tools.
Looking for a best flight options is much faster in a service aggregating flights from different companies than checking each company individually on their web sites. Reading a dozen of articles to backup your presentation is faster than reading a couple of books.
More sophisticated option is getting disproportional boost in time by small increase in money.
About ten years ago when writing code was an essential part of my everyday work as a software engineer, I bought a plugin for my code editor app. When writing code we start a bit clunky and then reorganize it. Doing this manually is a no brainer. It’s just lots of dump copy&paste work with minor changes. That plugin was automating this work for me. 50 dollars lifetime cost vs shaving off 10 minutes of work in a couple of clicks at least 5 times a day. That’s a great ratio of spent money to saved time.
By picking more efficient tools we can minimize the changes needed to balance scope, time, and cost.
This sounds like a silver bullet if not one thing: this is possible only occasionally. Why? Because you probably originally planned to use efficient tool anyway or you don’t know better tool yet. That’s why this is just an occasional break through.
Having balanced scope, time, and cost in your projects means having a solid ground for smooth and stress-free execution. Remember that balancing is ongoing act. When you have a change in one area then you need to make adjustments in others.