What is Project Management Triangle and Why it is Important? – 3 Important Elements
More than 70% of the projects running late or not completed on time had little impact on the delivery schedule or the customer.
50% of the projects running late or not completed on time had little or no impact on the customer’s willingness to pay for the completed project.
The total cost to deliver the projects not completed on time was less than the original budget.
The other 75% of the projects were over-budget and unachievable.
- What Causes These Project Failures?
- What is Project Management Triangle?
- Wrapping Up
- Frequently Asked Questions
Despite these data from teamstage, the moment you glance at the numbers, you might sense something is alarming. One of the key aspects of businesses is project management. It is crucial that project managers approach the process of managing projects with effective and transparent communication.
So What Causes These Project Failures? Let’s Take a Look at Them:
Mismanagement is the most common cause of project failure and it happens when somebody assumes that because the project charter stated that the project will finish at a certain time frame, it was going to reach completion on time. Project failure happens when something unexpected happens to the project.
The project management team and project stakeholders do not have control over what can go wrong. What is important to know is that you can avoid many failures with a few simple interventions.
Although it is tempting to quit or fire someone as a scapegoat, what is usually worse is to keep the project manager, project team members, and the customers in the dark and in constant panic until the project fails.
When project teams lose sight of the bigger picture, they focus their attention on getting things done, getting to the end of the project, and delivering quality products to the customer. This is where the project management team misses the ball and focuses on trying to make it work, so they lose sight of the bigger picture and get trapped in “getting it done” mode.
Related Reads:
- Top 10 Essential Microsoft Project Templates for Project Management
- Scrum Project Management – What You Should Know in 2022
- Microsoft Planner vs Project – The 5 Key Differences [2022]
What we must do is help them focus on not only achieving the goals but also on achieving the desired project outcomes. The project management team needs to use a project outcome management approach to take an end-to-end view of the project and not just deliver the projects but to understand and report the business outcomes they achieve at the end of the project.
Project managers who follow the ‘Mismanagement Triangle’ model described above can successfully manage multiple projects and not just one at a time. This is because their interest and focus are always on the big picture and the project outcomes so that they can manage and improve the productivity of their team and the business as a whole. They focus on trying to deliver value and improve the customer’s experience.
The Project Management Triangle comes into the picture in these situations where managers receive motivation from the projects themselves and offer the best results possible.
Let us discuss further what is Project Management Personnel:
These constraints are project-specific and include, for example, hiring more team members, training more team members, and/or spreading the workload among senior team members. Best practice often prescribes that these constraints should be considered when setting new project timelines.
Related Watch:
RTI: Risks, trends, and innovation. This set of constraints is crucial when a project is struggling to keep up with the latest technology, or when a project or program previously known for success starts turning its back on traditional approaches to start on more challenging trends and conditions.
What is Project Management Triangle?
The project management triangle is the strip of interrelated and interdependent activities that bring about project success or failure. It is a useful model for describing the key steps the project requires.
Essentially, the project management triangle is an acronym that depicts three different types of activities that you require in a project.
The project management triangle is a model that demonstrates how the balance between these three constraints—scope, time, and budget—affects the quality of the project.
The triangle illustrates how changing one restriction will need changing either one or both of the others to keep the quality. The Iron Triangle is another name for it, as well as the Triple Constraint Model. For a project to reach completion, project managers must handle all three of these restrictions.
1. Scope:
The deliverables and tasks that the team must finish to meet the project’s objectives are referred to as the scope. If stakeholders decide in the middle of the project that they wish to tweak one product or add another completely, then the scope may vary. Milestones are the endpoints of the project and serve as the overall objective or bigger picture of the project, which includes the project’s objectives and how the project must reach completion.
Some of the important factors in the scope of the project are:
- Gives accurate predictions
- Allowing for different points of view
- Not including conflicting perspectives
- Balancing the objectives of the project
- Transparency and visibility of the goals
2. Cost:
The entire sum of money necessary to finish a project is the project cost and is also known as the budget. Salaries for employees and expenditures for office space, tools, equipment, and other resources are all costs. However, if the project manager attempts to include operating costs that are not directly related to the project in the project budget, it simply adds a waste of money to the project, as it is part of the project’s objectives.
In addition to the project budget, the team must include several other costs associated with the project, such as:
- Work to perform before the project officially begins
- Planning and design to complete the project
- Working hours for the project
- Materials to use in the project
- Labor to perform to assist in the preparation of the project
Costs may change as a result of expanding a team or taking longer to execute a project. Labor costs and depreciation of equipment and materials are the two largest components of projects’ costs. Robust market research and appropriate project scope are both necessary to ensure that costs are reasonable and justified.
3. Time:
Time is the length of time needed to finish a project’s duties and the project itself. The schedule is another name for this constraint. Timelines may lengthen if the scope increases. Reduced funding has the same effect; for instance, if a team member is let go because of financial limitations, then the project may take longer to finish.
The time in the project management includes challenges some of which are:
- Uncertainty in the estimation of the duration
- Risky completion
- Uncertainty in the quality of results
- Unexpected technological challenges
- Delayed deliverables
People Also watch:
Wrapping Up:
Project management, like any skill, requires trust, honesty, and good communication between team members. Project management also requires an appreciation of risk and a focus on the experience and safety of yourself and your teammates.
Using the Project Management Triangle as a guide, you will find opportunities for risk mitigation and realistic timelines. As with any skill, practice makes perfect, so you must take the necessary time to perfect your project management skills.
For courses on project management and tools please check our course list.
For more information on other project management software read our blogs.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Who invented the project management triangle?
Deriving from Latin, the phrase was first coined by author and consultant, Dr. Martin Barnes. The meaning of the phrase focuses on the three areas of project management: scope, time, and cost. In essence, it represents the three things every project manager should consider to ensure they don’t miss anything in the project.
2. What is Golden Triangle in Project Management?
The Golden Triangle in Project Management is a concept that represents the relationship between the three aspects of project management: Scope, Time, and Cost.
Simon Calder
Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA.He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!
