Technology. People. Projects….Results.

Life outside the “Iron Triangle”

Scope, Resources and Schedule. These boundaries are often referred to as triple constraint or the iron triangle. These boundaries have long dictated “classic” project management theory and practice.

In classic PM, projects are treated as distinct entities within the business. They have a scope, resources, schedule and are self-contained. The Project Manager must perform within these boundaries to deliver the expected results. Any decisions that require changing one of these boundaries must come from outside of the project. These decisions typically involve functional or executive management.

If something unexpected happens that requires changing one of the boundaries; the Project Manager collects the relevant information and brings the issue to the Project Sponsor. The sponsor, in turn, listens to the situation and takes the recommendations of the Project Manager under advisement. Before making a decision, the sponsor may consider other information, confer with peers, or escalate to the next level of management. This entire data collection, analysis, escalation, and decision-making process usually takes time, during which the project may be stalled.

This process may be valid in many industries, especially mature ones where much of the uncertainty has been removed from the decision-making process by virtue of experience. In this case, the management decision makers are most likely seasoned professionals with a firm grasp of the business goals and the market environment. Taking the time to prepare an in-depth analysis for management will likely pay off on the operational side of the business in the form of lower production costs, lower support costs, and better overall product quality.

Now let’s consider a more likely scenario. For the purposes of this exercise, consider a company operating in internal and external uncertainty that is trying to apply classic PM methods.

• Internal uncertainty defines those variables within the project bubble that can be controlled by the Project Manager. These include scope, schedule, and cost.
• External uncertainty defines those variables outside of the project bubble, such as the industry’s business environment, the competition, and high-level, business strategy decisions.

The project comes to a decision point, but the Project Manager sees no obvious answer from his perspective. He starts collecting data to create an analysis to present the sponsor. However, in this environment there are limited solid facts upon which to build an analysis due to the inherent uncertainty within the organization. This leads him to make educated assumptions, possibly including the consensus opinion of his team. These efforts take additional time. At the completion of the analysis, he notices that there are multiple possible paths and no clear “best option” to recommend. The Project Manager approaches management seeking additional information to help clarify the decision. Management most likely does add new information to the equation, but they also, more than likely, add external uncertainties. The analysis now has so many dimensions and possible outcomes that it becomes nearly useless. Yet somehow, a decision is finally made and the project progresses.Let’s disect this process further. To make a mediocre at best decision, the Project Manager involved himself, a good part of his team, and management. This is a time-consuming and an inefficient use of resources. This same decision, or perhaps a better one, could have been made a lot quicker if the Project Manager had access to the right information from the start and was allowed to look “outside the triangle” (i.e., his triple constraint) to make the decision.In the classic PM model, the Project Manager is constrained by the triangle. They are usually given considerable liberty to operate within it but very little leeway outside of it where traditional management gets involved. Even if no implicit direction is given to the Project Manager, human nature suggests a proclivity to focus on things within one’s control, which in this case exists only within the triangle.In a large, complex company, this works fairly well. It could be assumed that a large organization would require numerous distinct roles in order to operate effectively. There should be distinct project manager role to run the project and a distinct management role to set the boundaries for the project.

I would argue that while the natural evolution of project management has created these paradigms to cut across the functional silos of large companies, this is not however the most agile way to organize projects for smaller organizations. While this model works for corporate giants in mature industries, it falls apart badly as you move to the opposite end of the PM agility spectrum—where speed is required and uncertainty abounds.

What would happen if you were freed from the complexity and constraint inherent in large organizations, would you still choose these distinct roles for your company?