Author: Rich Garling

It’s interesting how Zachary Wong, in his book Human factors in project management: Concepts, tools, and techniques for inspiring teamwork and motivation, felt that personal space is the most complex and least transparent of the three spaces (Wong, 2007). I have to agree wholeheartedly as my experiences show how putting a team together can be very challenging. It’s hard enough trying to pick the right mix together of onshore resources, especially if they’re of similar cultural upbringing and experiences; but try to create that mix from onshore resources of multiple cultures along with offshore mixed cultural resources. That is quite a handful of challenges.

I would consider the most important aspect of picking resources, besides making sure they have the technical knowledge and experience to complete the tasks, is are they of the right personality and temperament? Do their cultural beliefs and upbringing allow them to work effectively in the position being considered? As Wong suggested, everyday people are making judgment calls based on their beliefs and values (Wong, 2007).

I have had situations in which a fellow Project Manager had to determine when a task was going to be completed. This fellow Project Manager was a Junior Project Manager under my command. He needed to follow up with a Vice-President of the company to determine when he could reasonably expect approval of a document we need to move forward on a task. This Junior Project Manager was from India. In India they do not just go up or email, or leave a voice-message asking the question. They go about it in a roundabout way so as not to show disrespect, to show deference to authority. The problem here was that by the time he would get around to asking the question we would be behind schedule. Knowing this cultural difference meant my recognizing when to step in to cover a task while also showing respect to the Junior Project Manager so he wouldn’t lose face to his colleagues.

I will have to disagree with Wong on his feeling that some values are derived genetically (Wong, 2007). I believe that all values are learned or chosen by the way we’re raised. The only genetically passed on behaviors for humans are those dealing with survival. As Abraham Maslow described, people are motivated by five psychological levels of needs in which the most important one is physiological; basically the need to survive comes first placing cultural after this one is satisfied (Maslow, 1943). The balance of those needs: security, social, esteem, and self-actualization are all cultural, not genetics.

I have worked with many people from many different cultures. Many of these colleagues have successfully assimilated themselves into the American culture, their differences notwithstanding. It seems to me that if culture was genetic than these individuals would not be able to assimilate so easily. While there are differences in physical differences due to geographic location, and thus learned behavior due to those locations, our genetics is the same across the world. Our learned behaviors are only different due to location and society.

References

American Journal of Physical Anthropology. (1996). biological aspects of race. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 101, 569-570. Retrieved from http://physanth.org/about/position-statements/biological-aspects-race/

Maslow, A.H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review 50 (4) 370–96. Retrieved from http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Maslow/motivation.htm

Wong, Z. (2007). Human factors in project management: Concepts, tools, and techniques for inspiring teamwork and motivation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

I live the changes that have come to the IT world in corporate America: I’m a contract consultant who goes where the demand is. What I mean by that is the market has changed over the last twenty years. It has gone from where employees could count on a job for life to where you’re hired on to perform a specific task within a given time frame. Once you have completed that task, you move on.

For instance, I work for a recruiting firm headquartered out of New Jersey. I’m assigned as a Project Manager to a major corporation in Deerfield, IL. The ratio of contract consultants to full-time employees is 75% – 25% and wants to change that ratio to 90% – 10%. Many companies today find it increasingly beneficial to hire contractors who specialize in what the company needs. MCI’s Dick Liebhaber pointed out that it is easier to buy scope than to recruit, train and mentor permanent employees (Fleming, 2003). Companies can instantly buy the brain power they need for the specific task at hand. The cost savings in training and benefits has to be enormous.

Global trends are also affecting how HR manages resources. The breadth of the available pool of talent opens tremendously when you have the world in which to look. Jeremy C. Bradley, in his article in the Houston Chronicle, notes how traditionally HR has been a somewhat isolated profession, but with globalization and mass communication the world is becoming a smaller place (Bradley, 2015). Training has to be a cross-cultural event; meetings are conducted using multi-technical tools like big screen television, WebEx and webinars. Many things have to be considered when putting a team together.

What is interesting, and it takes the opposite view, is a study conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management in which respondents stated that the three biggest challenges facing HR Professionals was retaining qualified help, developing the next generation of corporate leaders, and creating a corporate culture that attracts the best qualified employees (Society for Human Resource Management, 2012). It looks to be an interesting task considering that many companies, and MCI, are moving in exactly the opposite direction.

References:
Bradley, J. C. (2015). Global trends that will affect human resources. Houston Chronicle. Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/global-trends-affect-human-resources-61643.html

Fleming, Q. W. (2003). Project procurement management: Contracting, subcontracting, teaming. Tustin, CA: FMC Press.

Society for Human Resource Management. (2012). Challenges facing hr over the next 10 years. Survey Findings.

Subramanian, V., & Ramachandran, R. (2010). McGraw-Hill’s PMP certification mathematics: project management professional exam preparation. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Verzuh, E. (2012). The fast forward MBA in project management, fourth edition. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Westland, J. (2006). The project management life cycle: A complete step-by-step methodology for initiating, planning, executing and closing the project successfully. London: Kogan Page.

Enterprise project management (EPM) is the integration of procedures, technology, organizational structure, and people that ensures alignment of projects to company strategy and goals.

There are three tiers of management in the EPM model. These tiers form the relationship between project, the projects resources, and company strategy. Project management focuses on the effective deliverance of selected projects. Program management is really management of multiple projects and it serves to coordinate projects and the resources that each of these projects share— particularly the people. Usually these projects share a similar goal and processes. Project portfolio management, associates the selection of projects and programs to the strategic goals of the company.

Program management is the management of multiple similar projects by individual project managers for each project and one Program Manager overseeing the whole. It strives to remove the confusion inherent by many related projects by effectively deploying limited resources, particularly personnel, among each project. It is able to do this by tracking relationships among projects, and managing projects or tasks that add value across projects yet are burdensome to any one project.

Project portfolio management (PPM) ensures that projects and programs promote organizational strategies and goals. It tries to do all of that by managing the limited resources available within the company. It requires disciplined decisions driven by priorities established by the Project Management Office or Executive decision.

Project Portfolio Management (PPM) has three primary purposes: align project selection with strategy; assign limited resources based on priorities; optimize deployment of resources across projects.
The benefits of PPM include: balancing projects by risk and reward; focusing on meaningful results that support strategic goals; choosing the right projects with the right resources to complete them; using strategic priorities to direct resource allocation.

The roles in PPM provide the authority and knowledge for PPM to function. The following roles should be included as part of any PPM: Steering Committee provides the link to the enterprise’s strategy and operations to ensure that the portfolio adds value to the organization; Portfolio Experts provide the working knowledge of portfolio management; Project Sponsors provide the expertise on the business benefits; Business Analysts are the experts on conducting analysis and documentation that help in making the decisions concerning a project.

Project Management Office primary purpose is to provide and maintain the project management standards and promote their use in an organization. The PMO actively supports a variety of projects by management of the perfunctory chores such as building and updating the project plan and budget documentation used by the projects. A PMO will also supply project managers to projects all over the organization. And, because it provides the project managers to the projects, the PMO can enforce the project management standards it establishes.

At work there are numerous PMO’s, usually one for each division and one main corporate PMO. Each of them operates differently from their colleagues in other divisions. The ultimate goal is have the one main corporate PMO guiding all the divisional PMO’s. work has a long way to go to meet that goal.

References:
Fleming, Q. W., & Koppelman, J. M. (2010). Earned value project management. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
Project Management Institute. (2013). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK guide), fifth edition. Newtown Square, PA: Author.
Verzuh, E. (2012). The fast forward MBA in project management, fourth edition. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

At one of the companies I have worked one of the documents each project is required to submit to the PMO is the “Project Management Plan (PMP)”. The PMP provides a mechanism in which to centrally locate many of the projects individual management plans including the Communication Plan, the Risk/Issue Management Plan, the Cost Management Plan, Change Management Plan, and the Document Management Plan.  PMI says that managing communications includes the methods essential to guarantee timely and correct planning of information used to run the project. This includes the gathering, dissemination, managing, controlling, monitoring, and eventual storing of project documentation (Project Management Institute, 2012).

Now, it’s not the typical plan that one would think of, nor is it a project schedule. This documents objective is to describe the project management system the team is going use to manage the project. The most important part of this whole document is the Communication Plan.

PMI points out that there is a need to define, plan and manage communications (Project Management Institute, 2012). I’ve learned through the years of managing projects that communications is all important. If you don’t communicate with the stakeholders and your team what is going on at any given moment in your project, your project will likely fail.

With the Communication plan we determined what types of communication would be required including status reports, Business Requirements Document, Functional Requirement Documents, Project Plan, Project Schedule, Financial Communications, and as you can see, the forms and types of communication are many (Westland, 2006).

Many of these types of communication were determined by utilizing other documents such as the Stakeholder Register, the Charter and Scope, as well as the project management plan (Project Management Institute, 2012).

The PMP also help us to define how we were going to communicate certain events in the project such as change management: Verzuh points out that the Change Management Plan should be tailored to fit your specific function (Verzuh, 2009). And he’s right because it is not one size fits all in Project Management.

The PMP plan describes the roles and responsibilities of those able to request changes and those who approve the changes. Its plan describes when a Change Request is required:

• Changes to the project’s scope / Business Requirements have been identified or requested.
• Changes to the project’s budget have been identified or requested.
• Changes to the project’s schedule have been identified or requested.

The plan requires that a Change Request Form be used to request a change and that it must be submitted to the Change Review Board for approval. In our case there is no maximum dollar limit, every change request no matter the cost has to be approved by the business sponsors.

The Project Manager has to be a communicator as well as a leader. They cannot be afraid to bring bad news to the forefront. Good news doesn’t always happen in projects. But the bad news could help in keeping the project from going from bad to worse. I would rather be accused of over communicating than to be accused of under communicating. When I over communicate I can always cut back. I under communicating once and I lost my job.

References:

Project Management Institute. (2013). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK guide), fifth edition.

Newtown Square, PA: Author.

Verzuh, E. (2012). The fast forward MBA in project management, fourth edition. Hoboken, NJ:

John Wiley & Sons.

Westland, J. (2006). The project management life cycle: A complete step-by-step methodology for initiating, planning, executing and closing the project

successfully. London: Kogan Page.

Keith Custer, in his article “The Seven Deadly Myths of Earned Value Methods in Project Management” (Custer, 2009), describes how Earned Value Management (EVM) is misunderstood as a tool for managing costs in a project. He points out that there is a fear of implementing EVM with detractors saying it is difficult and time consuming. They also claim that EVM is better suited for large ($1M+) or government projects but not for smaller projects (Custer, 2009).

But Custer claims that the process laid out over forty years ago is as appropriate for small as well as large projects and actually makes it easier to effectively manage them (Custer, 2009). In his article Custer lays out 7 myths about EVM stating his case as to why each of these is invalid.

EVM Myths in Managing Project Costs

Myth 1: That only contractors and government projects need use EVM (Custer, 2009). Custer points out that the reason why government and contractors use EVM is precisely because it is so effective at controlling project costs (Custer, 2009). In fact, it is effective as an estimating tool. Properly documented estimation can be more effectively tracked than hastily thrown together estimations. Custer also points out that the government borrowed EVM from industrial manufacturers who had developed the process early in the 20^th century (Custer, 2009). He refers to the fact that like many projects in private industry, government projects are notorious for being under estimated and for costly budget overruns (Custer, 2009). The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has consistently discovered in study after study that those projects run using EVM they rarely under estimate and rarely has significant budget cost overruns (Custer, 2009). In fact, data gathered since mid-1970 has shown a significant improvement in the ability to scientifically forecast the outcome of a project at the 20% completion mark (Fleming & Koppelman, 2010). Both Custer and Fleming point out that EVM’s WBS, schedule constructs, organizational breakdown structures, reporting, variance reporting provide a significant boost to estimating, project performance tracking and forecasting at any given point in the project (Custer, 2009) (Fleming & Koppelman, 2010).

Myth 2: EVM is only useful for large or long term projects: Any project of any size can benefit from EVM, according to Custer (Custer, 2009). And he is right. I have used EVM on projects ranging from $50,000.00 up to $8 million with great success. With smaller projects you have to increase the frequency of the reporting cycle so that you get timely results from monthly to weekly to daily depending on the duration of the project (Custer, 2009). The key point here is that EVM can alert the Project Manager to problems with the budget and schedule at any given point, but there is work involved. The work, though, is what I would consider to be minimal amount required for any size project: Scope, WBS, schedule, regular reporting.

Myth 3: EVM is too rigid: As I stated above, any good Project Manager knows that the minimum requirement for managing a project is scope, WBS, schedule, and regular reporting (Custer, 2009). Custer emphasizes that EVM requires strict detailed up front planning and quantifying of expected results (Custer, 2009). But to say that EVM is too rigid is completely wrong. In fact, it’s very flexible where many of the tools can be constructed to suit your needs on the fly without any negative effect on the data (Custer, 2009) (Fleming & Koppelman, 2010). One thing that Custer points to is the successful use of EVM in defense projects where there are huge risks involved (Custer, 2009). In many of those projects only the near term scope was known with many details not known for many years. The key, as noted by both authors, was a well-developed WBS that gave the Project Manager the flexibility needed to use EVM effectively (Custer, 2009) (Fleming & Koppelman, 2010). A project I’m currently running has a WBS that is not well-developed and my aim is to apply the rules of EVM to bring it into alignment so that I can use it as the tool it is meant to be.

Myth 4: There is such a thing as EVM lite: As noted earlier, yes, there is a sort of EVM lite (Custer, 2009). But you still have to do the work of developing a scope, WBS, schedule, and regular reporting. Custer refers to the many software companies that proclaim an EVM Lite version are really trying to just sell their software (Custer, 2009). The problem is that these companies leave out important aspects of the process, such as implementing management recommendations resulting from the EVM data gathered. Custer asks what the sense is in gathering the information if you’re not going to use it (Custer, 2009). Good point, I have seen many a Project Manager gather together the information, only not use it because it was not good news in their eyes. Never mind that the point of the information was to give management a truthful view of the status of the project so that they could make good decisions.

Myth 5: Implementing EVM is a lot of extra work: Yes, it is hard work, but not extra work since it’s work the Project Manager should be doing already. EVM is a process that allows the Project manager to use the information gathered and organized more effectively. It helps to draw out a clearer picture of the true status of the project. The EVM standards only reinforce the good project standards that should already be in place. EVM actually helps to integrate them (Custer, 2009).

Myth 6: Companies need to change their structure to implement EVM: While EVM requires that the WBS define who is responsible, the department and individual, it does not require a change in the organizations structure (Custer, 2009). Even in a functional matrix organized company, EVM only requires that each department be listed as to what they have agreed to do (Custer, 2009). In fact, EVM works very well in cross-functional organizations in tracking the costs of the project and rolling those costs up to the project level (Fleming & Koppelman, 2010). At Walgreens we use an EVM lite that was internally created in which accounting developed a system for tracking each project costs by department.

Myth 7: Implementing EVM requires expensive software: No specific software is required (Fleming & Koppelman, 2010). Many basic software’s such as Excel, MS Word, MS Project work quite well with EVM.

Conclusion

Controlling the costs of the project is one of the most important responsibilities assigned to the Project Manager. As has been pointed out, controlling project costs can be done quite effectively from estimation to project completion using EVM. Custer and Fleming point out, regularly, that the EVM processes and tools help the Project Manager to effectively estimate the cost of the project; to determine at any given point the true status of the project; and to accurately forecast its outcome even when only 15-20% of the project is completed (Custer, 2009) (Fleming & Koppelman, 2010). Like with any undertaking, you have to create the tools needed effectively and then use them effectively so they work for you. As I stated earlier, many of the projects I have managed were in poor shape when I inherited them. I had to literally rework the scope, the WBS, the project schedule so that I could use the EVM tools and processes to keep control of the costs of my projects. The tools and processes work. All you have to do is use them.

References:

Custer, K. (2009, January 21). The Seven Deadly Myths of Earned Value Methods in Project Management [Web log post].

Retrieved from http://www.projectsmart.co.uk

Fleming, Q. W., & Koppelman, J. M. (2010). Earned value project management. Newtown Square,

PA: Project Management Institute.

Kendrick, T. (2009). Identifying and managing project risk: Essential tools for failure-proofing your project.

New York: AMACON.

Lipke, W. H. (2009). Earned schedule: An extension to earned value management– for managing schedule performance.

Raleigh, N.C.: Lulu Pub.

Project Management Institute. (2013). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK guide), fifth edition.

Newtown Square, PA: Author.

Verzuh, E. (2012). The fast forward MBA in project management, fourth edition. Hoboken, NJ:

John Wiley & Sons.

Westland, J. (2006). The project management life cycle: A complete step-by-step methodology for initiating, planning, executing and closing the project

successfully. London: Kogan Page.

Eric Verzuh notes that sometimes it seems that for every risk problem solved a new risk appears (Verzuh, 2012) and that can be so true. Perhaps the biggest risk to a project is when the team skips risk analysis because they consider it unnecessary.  Out of the 5 risk strategies described by Verzuh: Acceptance, avoidance, contingency planning, transfer and mitigate, he seems to have forgotten one…ignoring…hoping it goes away. What I will describe here, briefly, is where the team decided a possible event wasn’t going to be a risk, and there wasn’t much evidence to support it as a possible risk, yet it eventually turned into an issue.

Kendrick describes a risk as almost any uncertain event associated with work. It’s as the insurance industry characterizes risk as loss multiplied by likelihood. I was the project manager of a project that was developing an intranet system that the U.S. Navy would use to manage the recruits at three naval bases in the Midwest, south, and eastern parts of the country. The navy had a big interest in using current web technology to develop applications that could be used to manage recruits from boot camp to deployment. When I first started I was a one man team doing mostly proof-of-concept (POC) work.

Two years into the project, by then I had a team of 15, it was decided we should re-locate the web and data servers housing this system to a server farm located at Pensacola, FL. The navy has two bases located on the peninsula, virtually on opposite sides. While developing the requirements for this project we discussed some of the risks we would face. Most of the team was worried about working with servers located almost 1000 miles away. They felt a big risk was losing internet connectivity. They also felt that not having direct managerial control was a risk; basically we wouldn’t be in control of the box anymore and they were not happy about that.

The process I recommended we follow was basic PMBOK: Plan risk management; identify the risks; perform qualitative and quantitative analysis; plan the risk response; and control the risks. While identifying risk was ok with the team, they weren’t exactly thrilled with having to develop a response to each risk. One risk I identified was the possibility of a hurricane wiping out the entire server farm. Everyone disagreed with me. I had pointed out the bases, and both the main server farm and the back-up server farm, were located in Florida, on the Gulf of Mexico, and on a peninsula. They felt that there was sufficient protection that a hurricane could never wipe out the entire farm. I asked them to humor me, let’s develop a mitigation plan just in case. They said ok, but it was never completed. My resources were all working for different departments, only part of their time was devoted to this project.

Some of you may remember a hurricane named Ivan. Ivan, a category 5 hurricane, hit landfall just west of Pensacola back in 2004. Ivan had a surge wave that was reported to be 26’ tall. Ivan basically wiped out the back-up server farm first, and then the main server farm. And we had no back-up plan in which to keep the system alive. Or so they thought. I guess this is one reason why I’m a project manager. I had a back-up system created at Great Lakes just in case. Cost was minimal as I used the old servers we had used before to run the system. I had created a contingency fund and I had a program created to monitor the systems in Florida. If either one lost connectivity the spare servers would immediately back up the entire system.

The lesson learned here is that as a project manager I have to be prepared for any and all types of risks. If it’s difficult to get your team to prepare the plan, then do it yourself. In the end it’s your job on the line if a risk becomes a reality and you didn’t plan accordingly.

References:

Kendrick, T. (2009). Identifying and managing project risk: Essential tools for failure-proofing your project. New York: AMACON.

Project Management Institute. (2013). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK guide), fifth edition. Newtown Square, PA: Author.

Verzuh, E. (2012). The fast forward MBA in project management, fourth edition. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

One of the main reasons that projects exist is because of how well the concept fits into helping businesses meet their strategic goals and to respond to current business conditions. Quite honestly, business strategy and project management go hand in hand. Businesses today are forced to be much more agile than they were 30-40 years ago. Business have to deal with a climate that includes shorten product life cycles, increasing technical capabilities, agile competition, all of which make it a necessity to be much more competitive and agile in order to meet that competition and serve customer needs (Cleland 1998)

Today’s Business Climate
In today’s business climate business has to be able to organize a group that can solely concentrate on one objective that meets a business’s strategic goal or need. “Projects are the means for achieving strategic goals. Entering new markets, driving down costs, delivering innovation— all are achieved through projects (Verzuh 2011)”. What businesses have to do is to carefully determine all they can do with the available resources they have.

This means they have to have a steering committee, made of management and stakeholders who have skin in the game, who make the decisions on which projects will be approved. They will base their decisions on how the proposed project fits into the company strategy. They will ask “how well does the proposed project utilize the available resources and at what cost? Which project is going to get us the most bang for our buck?”

Project Portfolio Management
I have worked for companies where “Project Portfolio Management (PPM)” (Verzuh 2011) was handled quite successfully. “It ensures that projects and programs promote organizational strategies and goals” (Verzuh 2011). I’ve worked for some where it wasn’t handled as well and you ran into a Vice-President’s pet project that would suck away all of the resources you thought were committed to your project. The object of the PPM is to ensure that only those projects that move the company towards its stated strategic objective shall be approved. PPM “accomplishes that by avoiding the common trap of trying to do all projects in the midst of limited resources. It requires disciplined decisions driven by agreed-upon priorities.” (Verzuh 2011)

But PPM cannot work if it isn’t organized correctly and the company is not dedicated to adhering to its principles. PPM can bring a balanced portfolio of projects that help a business to achieve its strategic goals while delivering the highest return on its investment.

It’s much like changing from Waterfall as a project methodology to Agile as a methodology. If you’re not fully dedicated to it then it won’t work.
At Walgreens we use a hybrid system that continually needs tweaking. They have a project intake group that reviews the submitted project idea forms. The project idea is reviewed by the Intake Steering Committee made up of the directors of the various team divisions from within the BSS Retail Group. They determine if the project fits into the business strategy and in what way it fits (does it add value or is it a fix). Once the committee approves the project for further review it is assigned to a Project Manager. The project proceeds to identify all impacted teams and develops all the supporting documentation including a high level business requirements document, the project charter, a high level functional requirements document, and what we call an E0 ROM budget estimation (+/_50%). The business requesting the project, and the Intake Steering committee, use the information gathered by the Project Manager to make a determination on the project.

Conclusion
Ultimately, a company that doesn’t develop some kind of process in which to review and approve projects stands losing because it will have wasted resources, time, and money. That business will ultimately find itself out of business as much better organized businesses that understand the value of PPM will beat them to market.

References:
Verzuh, Eric (2011-11-03). The Fast Forward MBA in Project Management (Kindle Locations 9926-9927). Wiley. Kindle Edition.
Cleland, D. I. (1998). Strategic project management. In J. K. Pinto (Ed.), The Project Management Institute Project Management Handbook (pp. 27-54). San Francisco:          Jossey-Bass.

Jack S. Duggal, MBA, PMP in his article “Next Level Up: How Do You Measure Project Success? Rethinking the Triple Constraint” (PMI Community Posts, 9 July 2010) poses the question of whether a Project Manager feels trapped by the traditional triple constraint of Scope, Time, and Cost? Mr. Duggal thinks we need to look at the whole concept differently, especially in light of companies demanding that projects fit into the strategic goals of the company. We need to redefine the definition of success:
“Projects that are delivered on time, within budget and meet scope specifications may not necessarily perceived to be successful by key stakeholders.” (Duggal, PMI Community Posts, 9 July 2010)

Other criteria for project success
Mr. Duggal proposes that project managers need to take into consideration other criteria for measuring progress success. In a survey conducted by the “Projectize Group” in 2008-09 project stakeholders listed such things stakeholder satisfaction, meeting business objectives, customer/end-user acceptance, quality, and benefits as being necessary to determining project success.
“An important concept to understand is that time, cost and scope are related to project outputs, whereas the other factors are related to business outcomes.” (Duggal, PMI Community Posts, 9 July 2010)

I agree that ultimately business outcomes along with strategic goals is what drives projects, it is the job of the project manager to ensure that the project stays aligned with those business goals by using the iron triangle effectively. By controlling scope, time, and costs, the project manager can bring the project to a successful conclusion while meeting the strategic goals of the business.

Fitting the “Other” criteria into the Triple Constraint
Stakeholder satisfaction can be met through a clearly defined project scope. In the scope the object and the goals of the project need to be clearly defined to meet the expectations of the business and the stakeholders. Ultimately they are the ones who approve the scope of the project. The project manager needs to ensure that the scope defines how the object of the project will be met. He needs to ask and get answered the question of what is the purpose of the project: What need or problem is the project supposed to fulfil or solve? What business outcome is the end result?

I see the definition of the scope as the first means by which the team begins to make the connection between the stated business goal and the means by which to achieve that goal. One of the tools that incorporate the scope is the project plan, including the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). In the WBS the project team defines the work needed to achieve the business goal. It breaks the work down into manageable work packages, sometimes referred to as activities. The duration of time it takes to perform these work packages is estimated which ultimately leads to our budget. The stakeholders will have to review and approve the schedule that gets produced after the WBS is completed. All this activity brings a greater understanding of the strategic business goal the project is helping the business to achieve.

Mr. Duggal suggests that we “mirror outputs with business outcomes”:
“While focusing on each of the triple constraints, the project manager has to reflect and make project decisions based on the achievement of the corresponding business outcome. Cost and time focus has to optimize business benefits like ROI, NPV, etc.,” (Duggal, PMI Community Posts, 9 July 2010)

He feels that user acceptance in the end has to be the ultimate goal of the project. I agree because ultimately user acceptance has to be achieved in order to bring the project to a successful conclusion. In order to optimize ROI and NPV the project has to successfully meet a business need, a corresponding business outcome. After all, why else would we be performing the project if not to meet a business goal? In my own experience I have noticed that when you have a clearly defined scope you get better performance from your team. The team doesn’t like to do work that has no positive meaning.

Parallel Balance
Mr. Duggal suggests using a parallelogram, rather than a triangle, as a way to view managing the contending forces that pull at a project. Each side of the parallelogram would represent the following:
1. Budget
2. Scope
3. Schedule
4. Business benefits/outcomes

The Project Manager would balance budget with scope and schedule or scope with schedule and budget. Business benefits could include strategic goals, user acceptance, and customer satisfaction.

Diamond of Opportunity
The diamond of opportunity looks at tactical project outputs with strategic business outcomes. In other words, does the project align with the expected outcome; are we getting what we’re asking for. Mr. Duggal feels that multiple sides of the diamond help the project manager include multiple levels of focus that may be relevant to the business.

Conclusion
I think that Mr. Duggal ideas carry merit due to the importance of user acceptance of the projects output. The project has to meet the business needs or solve a problem otherwise it has no real reason to exist. But I also feel that the traditional triple constraint iron triangle effectively incorporates the desires of the business because it forces the team to focus on what is really necessary to achieve the goal.

References:
1. Duggal, J. (2010-09-10). Next Level Up: How Do You Measure Project Success? Rethinking the Triple Constraint. Issue of PMI Community Post

It must be understood that the primary responsibility of a project manager is to lead – all the stakeholders, the customers, management, vendors, and project team— and encourage them to work together during the course of the project.