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The Spider’s Stratagem: Beyond the Triple Constraint
Ian Whittingham, PMP is director of Calixo Consulting, providing project and program management expertise from initiation through to implementation, covering business transformation, workflow process re-engineering, and enterprise data integration. He is a regular contributor to ProjectManagement.com. You may contact Ian directly at [email protected].
When Dave Garrett recently asked: “Is the Triple Constraint the WRONG way to Define Success?” on his Project Management 2.0 blog, he hit a hot button topic judging by the torrent of commentary it provoked. While there was divergence of opinion regarding its deficiencies and how it might be improved, there was general consensus that the triple constraint is a double-bind when it comes to measuring project success.
Whether seasoned or novice, most project managers are sensitive to the subtle differences between successfully delivering a project versus successfully realizing the business value of a project. Though related, both are measured and judged in different ways. The triple constraint is predicated on a fundamental assumption about the dependent relationships between three key elements: a defined scope of work, the amount of time required (or available) to accomplish that scope of work and the amount of resource--expressed as a budget allocation that the project will consume--which is required to deliver the scope of work.
Change the parameter of one of these three attributes and you have to make a corresponding adjustment to at least one of the other two. Thus, in constraining one another, they collectively bind the project to a finite set of possible outcomes. For each project, the challenge the triple constraint embodies is always the same: …
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