The Iron Triangle of Project Management. The most significant concept I recall from both courses and my experiences in project management. But a key insight 💡 is that although originating in project management, you can apply this to all jobs involving management. If your job has a goal to reach, your initial reaction should be, ‘What are my degrees of “freedom” to accomplish it?’
When you delve into these degrees of freedom, you return (in essence) to the Iron Triangle of project management, a part often forgotten. Due to its paramount importance, I’m eager to share it with you.
📐 Within the triangle, your aim is to achieve a qualitative delivery of your goal. You accomplish this within a certain budget, timeframe, and scope. If, for unforeseen reasons, an unexpected event occurs, you must adjust one of these three factors to uphold your quality (unless it’s acceptable to compromise quality, of course). It’s crucial that, when faced with a task, you identify which factor is adaptable. This can either be a fixed factor or a flexible one, depending on the context and company.
A vital insight for every manager: if you ever embark on a task where all three factors (budget, timeframe, and scope) AND quality are fixed, you are in for a heavy ride. In any project or management objective, Murphy’s Law is bound to emerge, and then you’ll want to discern which factor can be adjusted. It’s essential that this awareness is present within the company as it’s better to know what can shift than to do it randomly ad hoc.
👉 Interested to know more, have a chat or talk about presentations on this subject, let’s talk over a cup of coffee ☕
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