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Project Constraints: Scope, Time, and Cost

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
463 views17 pages

Project Constraints: Scope, Time, and Cost

Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
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Project Constraints

Every project is constrained in different ways. Some Project managers focus on


scope, time, and cost constraints. These limitations are sometimes referred to in
project management as the triple constraint. To create a successful project, project
managers must consider scope, time, and cost and balance these three often
competing goals. They must consider the followings:

Scope: What work will be done as part of the project? What unique product, service,
or result does the customer or sponsor expect from the project?

Time: How long should it take to complete the project? What is the project’s
schedule?

Cost: What should it cost to complete the project? What is the project’s budget?
What resources are needed?
3 MAIN CONSTRAINS (TRIPLE CONSTRAINTS)
Other people focus on the quadruple (fourfold)
constraints, which adds quality as a fourth constraint.

Quality: How good does the quality of the products or


services need to be? What do we need to do to satisfy
the customer?

The PMBOK® Guide, suggests these


four constraints plus risk and resources,
(total six constraints) but states that there
may be others as well, depending on
the project.

Six typical projects constraints


The triple constraint goals— scope, time, and cost —often have a specific target at the
beginning of the project.

It might be needed to increase the budget to meet scope and time goals or decrease
the scope to meet time and budget goals.

The other three constraints— quality, risk, and resources — affect the
ability to meet scope, time, and cost goals. Projects by definition, involve uncertainty
and resources, and the customer defines quality.
No one can predict with one hundred percent accuracy what risks
might occur on a project. Resources (people) working on the project
might produce different results, and material resources may vary as
well. Customers cannot define their quality expectations in detail for
a project on day one. These three constraints often affect each other
as well as the scope, time, and cost goals of a project.
Experienced project managers know that you must decide which constraints are most
important on each particular project. If time is most important, you must often change the
initial scope and/or cost goals to meet the schedule. You might have to accept more risk and
lower quality expectations. If scope goals are most important, you may need to adjust time
and/or cost goals, decrease risk, and increase quality expectations. If communications is
most important, you must focus on that. If there are set procurement goals or constraints,
that knowledge might be key to the project.

In any case, sponsors must provide some type of target goals for a project’s scope, time, and
cost and define other key constraints for a project.
The project manager should be communicating with the sponsor throughout the project to
make sure the project meets his or her expectations.

How can you avoid the problems that occur when you meet scope, time, and cost goals, but
lose sight of customer satisfaction?
The answer is good project management, which includes more than meeting project
constraints.
Stakeholders can be roughly sorted into positive stakeholders, whose interests
and goals align with your project; negative stakeholders, whose interests are harmed
or compromised by your project’s process or results; and tangential stakeholders,
who have an interest in some specific element of your project but are not affected by
the project as a whole.
Project Stakeholders
Stakeholders are the people involved in or affected by Project activities and include the
project sponsor, project team, support staff, customers, users, suppliers, and even opponents
to the project. These stakeholders often have very different needs and expectations.

• Project sponsor: The manager or executive, usually internal, with oversight


responsibility for the project. The project sponsor is usually the one who makes major policy
decisions.

• Customer: The person or group that has requested or purchased the product, service, or
result. Customers may be external to the organization or internal. If internal, they may
overlap with the project sponsor.

• Project manager: The person directly charged with managing and leading the project.
Though this is most often the project manager, in a phased project, there may be other
project managers working before, after, or in parallel on elements of the same overall project.
• Project team members: Project team members are those people responsible for
performing specific project activities. Team members can work full time on the project
throughout the length of the project, but can also work
part-time or only on specific activities. Although they are usually part of your
organization, they may also be consultants or temporary hires.

• The supervisor or manager of the Project Manager: Though the supervisor or


manager of the project manager may also be the project sponsor, this is not always
the case. The project manager may have a permanent organizational home and job
responsibilities, and he/she may need to spend some of his/her time and effort on
permanent job responsibilities even though you are serving as a project manager.

• End user(s): End users are the people who will use the product, service, or
result that the project is creating. They may not be the actual customers,
and they may or may not be within the organization.
The stakeholders often have very different needs and expectations. For example, there are
several stakeholders involved in a home construction project.

The project sponsors would be the potential new homeowners. They would be the people
paying for the house and could be on a very tight budget, so they would expect the
contractor to provide accurate estimates of the costs involved in building the house. They
would also need a realistic idea of when they could move in and what type of home they
could afford given their budget constraints.

The project manager in this example would normally be the general contractor responsible
for building the house. He or she needs to work with all the project stakeholders to meet
their needs and expectations.

The project team for building the house would include several construction workers,
electricians, carpenters, and so on. These stakeholders would need to know exactly what
work they must do and when they need to do it.
Building a house requires many suppliers. The suppliers would provide the wood, windows,
flooring materials, appliances, and other items.

Additional stakeholders would include municipal and mayor, who would expect to obey
municipal regulations. They might suggest certain guidelines for the height of the buildings
and the distance between the buildings. The city may also have regulations to ensure the
safety of the public in the area of the construction site. The local building inspector would
also be a stakeholder, concerned with ensuring that everything meets specific codes and
regulations.
There may or may not be opponents to a project. In this example, there might be a neighbor
who opposes the Project because the workers are making so much noise that she cannot
concentrate on her work at home, or the noise might awaken her sleeping children. She
might interrupt the workers to voice her complaints or even file a formal complaint.
Alternatively, the neighborhood might have association rules concerning new home design
and construction. If the homeowners did not follow these rules, they might have to halt
construction due to legal issues (Negative stakeholders).
Project Management Process Groups
The five project management process groups include initiating, planning, executing,
monitoring and controlling, and closing activities. It will be given more information on the
process groups and how they relate to the ten project management knowledge areas.
Initiating

Planning

Executing

Monitoring and Controlling

Closing
Project Management Knowledge Areas
Project management knowledge areas describe the key capabilities that project
managers must develop. The corresponding figure shows the ten knowledge areas
of Project management. Project managers must have knowledge and skills in all ten
of these areas. They are briefly described as follows:

 Project integration management is an overarching function that coordinates the


work of all other knowledge areas. It affects and is affected by all of the other
knowledge areas.

 Project scope management involves working with all appropriate stakeholders to


define, gain written agreement for, and manage all the work required to
complete the project successfully.
 Project time management includes estimating how long it will take to complete the
work, developing an acceptable project schedule given cost-effective use of available
resources, and ensuring timely completion of the project.

 Project cost management consists of preparing and managing


the budget for the project.

 Project quality management ensures that the project will satisfy


the stated or implied needs for which it was undertaken.

 Project human resource management is concerned with making


effective use of the people involved with the project.

 Project communications management involves generating,


collecting, disseminate (broadcast, spread), and storing project information.
 Project risk management includes identifying, analyzing, and responding to risks
related to the project.

 Project procurement management involves acquiring or procuring goods and


services for a project from outside the performing organization.

 Project stakeholder management focuses on identifying Project stakeholders,


understanding their needs and expectations, and engaging them appropriately
throughout the project. Note that PMI added stakeholder management as a tenth
knowledge area to the PMBOK® Guide
Ethics in Project Management

Ethics, loosely defined, is a set of principles that guide our decision making based on
personal values of what is “right” and “wrong.”

Making ethical decisions is an important part of our personal and professional lives
because it generates trust and respect with other people. Project managers often face
ethical dilemmas. For example, several projects involve different payment methods. If a
Project manager can make more money by doing a job poorly, should he or she do the job
poorly? No!
If a project manager is personally opposed to the development of nuclear weapons, should
he or she refuse to manage a project that helps produce them? Yes!

Ethics guide us in making these types of decisions.

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