What We Are Still Getting Wrong About Quality
Mark Mullaly is president of Interthink Consulting Incorporated, an organizational development and change firm specializing in the creation of effective organizational project management solutions. Since 1990, it has worked with companies throughout North America to develop, enhance and implement effective project management tools, processes, structures and capabilities. Mark was most recently co-lead investigator of the Value of Project Management research project sponsored by PMI. You can read more of his writing at markmullaly.com.
Quality is theoretically important. We know this, because it used to share equal billing with scope on the triangle of constraints.
I say “used to,” because A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) doesn’t talk about the triangle of constraints much anymore. In fact, it isn’t mentioned at all. Today, there are simply “competing project constraints” that include (but aren’t limited to) scope, quality, schedule, budget, resources and risks. I have more than a few problems with this elaboration. The big one though is that--just like for priorities--when everything is a constraint, nothing is. Lump quality in with everything else, and it unsurprisingly slips to the background of consciousness. We may hope for it, but hope should never be a strategy.
There was a lot that was useful about the idea of the triangle constraints. It was a valuable communication tool. It actually had a lot of resonance with executives, as well. When you outlined the relationship of faster, cheaper and better and told them that they could “pick any two,” they tended to buy in. And, most often, the idea of “better” was one of the top two. You might want fast, or you might want cheap, but those were the two trade-offs on the road to making sure that quality stayed as high as possible.
Not that the …
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