Project Management Triangle: Achieving Balance In Your Project

Posted on Sep 21, 2022 at 06:09 PM

Among the project management paradigms is the Project Management Triangle, which shows how the balance between the three angles, scope, time, and budget, affects project quality.

The project management triangle is also known as the Triple Constraints, the Golden Projects Triangle, or the Dempster's Triangle.

As a project manager, you understand the frustration of maintaining high productivity with little time and cost.

To learn more about the concept of the project management triangle and how to balance the three points in the triangle, Read on for this comprehensive article.

What is the project management triangle?

The Project Management Triangle has three variables that determine the quality of the project. It involves scope, cost, and time.

It’s the project manager’s job to balance all three elements to keep the project within budget and on deadline while still fulfilling the specifications of the project’s scope.

How scope, cost, and time are related

There are two types of relationships at play in the project triangle. 

The first is the relationship between scope and the two other project variables. The scope is directly proportional to both time and cost. When scope increases, time and money must also increase to tackle a larger project and maintain the same level of quality.

The second type of relationship is the relationship between time and cost, which is an inversely proportional relationship. If there is a need to cut costs, then deadlines will have to be extended; but if you encounter a sudden time crunch, you’ll need extra budget to adjust to shorter timelines.

You can't alter these two relationships—nothing you can do will make it possible to change one variable without causing a corresponding change, directly or inversely, in the other two points on the triangle. This is why the project triangle is often called the iron triangle of triple constraints. No matter how strong project management skills are, managers can't bond the iron triangle to their will.

Explanation of the three points of a triangle:

To achieve success in various businesses and keep all three elements in check, the project manager must have a deep understanding of each variable and where they have the opportunity to be flexible to accommodate changes throughout the project. Here is a detailed explanation of each variable separately:

• Scope

The scope is the “size” of the project in terms of the quality, detail, and magnitude of the project’s deliverables. As the size of the project increases, it will naturally require more time and money to complete.

Elements of the project scope might include:

• Project complexity
• Quantity of finished product(s)
• Output quality
• Strength Level of detail
• Number of features

Avoid “scope creep” by finalising project plans and getting project stakeholders to sign off on everything before production begins. 

• Cost

In the project management triangle, you must rigorously activate cost control techniques, keeping in mind that the cost is not just cash. This triangle point includes all the tools, equipment, and support required to complete the project. Often referred to as “resources". Generally, you can tie back everything within this point to a financial value.

Elements of cost might include:

• Financial budget
• Number of team members
• Equipment and facilities
• Key opportunities

For example, adding employees requires an additional budget for salaries; taking an opportunity to keep offices open longer requires an additional budget for hours of electricity usage.

• Time 

When measuring time for a project, you must keep in mind the priority of the tasks and the extent of the impact between the tasks in terms of reliability, which means that you cannot achieve some tasks without achieving other tasks first.

Elements of time might include:

• Overall project timeline.
• Hours worked on the project.
• Internal calendars and goalposts.
• Time allotted for planning and strategy.
• The number of project phases.

Suppose the budget is cut or the scope is increased. In that case, you’ll need to find intelligent ways to compensate by loosening one or more of your project's time constraints, extending deadlines, adding hours, or adopting project time management strategies.

How to manage your project according to the project management triangle

Here are concrete ways to balance the constraints of the project management triangle. 

• Communicate with stakeholders: 

Speak with stakeholders to know the acceptable change and constraints you should prioritise.

Is the deadline immovable, or is the budget strict? This will give you an idea of how the project can adapt should necessary changes. 

This is a crucial step in the initial stages of the project, but frequent communication should also happen throughout the project.

• Establish risk management processes: 

Risk planning should be a step into your project management process to prevent scope creep and stay within budget and schedule. Identify risks, then establish a plan to mitigate each.

• Create change management processes: 

Change is often inevitable. Having a change management process in place creates a structured way for changes to be approved or rejected so that the changes are not random.

This ensures the team is aware of changes as they happen and how they impact the project. This can also reduce scope creep.

• Choose a methodology based on constraints: 

You might opt to adopt a project management methodology based on your constraints. Projects that face strict constraints are often managed through Waterfall-type approaches, requiring high management skills such as flexibility. There is a range of approaches in project management that we will explain below.

How to Adjust the triangle to your management goals?!

Many approaches to project management prioritise different project variables ( Time, Cost and scope).

These approaches differ according to the goal; some prioritise low costs, and others prioritise saving time. Here are the best ones:

1- Resource-saving project methods

Projects with stricter budgets and more flexibility in the timeline will benefit from these project management methods, which prioritise efficient resource usage.

• Waterfall: 

Project phases are completed sequentially, so timelines must be flexible since a delay in one phase will require adjustments to all subsequent phases. You need to acquire highly qualified talents and add them to your team.

• Lean: 

Prioritises minimal costs and resources, allowing for longer timelines or scope cutbacks to keep the project within budget.

2-   Time-saving project methods

In situations where time is of the essence, these project management methods can eliminate unnecessary downtime and expedite entire project processes. 

• Agile: 

Prioritises flexible processes, so teams are prepared to adjust to change requests with adaptations that require knowledge, minimal time or cost increases.

• Scrum: 

We often see a specific type of agile project management contributing to software development that utilises facets of Scrum methodologies like sprints and daily team touch-bases to minimise time lost to work-in-progress stages.

• Kanban: 

Uses continuous collaborative processes to minimise the work-in-progress time.

• Scrumban: 

Combines the collaborative and continuous nature of the Kanban process with Scrum’s daily team reviews to minimise work-in-progress time better.

Of course, the goal of every method is to find the optimal balance between low costs, quick speeds, and high quality. But since the project management triangle requires prioritisation of at least one variable, these methods skew in the direction of whichever variable is most important to the team.

Though the iron triangle and its system of triple constraints may seem limited at first, once you learn how to apply them in your enterprise project scope management, you’ll find that these tools will make your projects run more smoothly.

Finally, 

Project managers must master the skills of the project management triangle, which is one of the basic skills to know. So if you are interested in learning other basics of project management, we advise you to attend Feasibility Studies Training Courses in London. 

These courses will lead you to a better understanding of your limitations and flexibilities ahead of time; you can avoid costly setbacks in the future.