All projects have:
- An overall goal
- A project manager
- Individual tasks to be performed
- Timing for those tasks to be completed(such as 3 hours, 3 days, 3 months)
- Timing relationships between those tasks(For example, you can’t put a new manufaturing process in place until you train people in how to use the process.)
- Resources(people, equipment, facilities, and supplies, for example) to accomplish the work
- A budget(the costs associated with those people, equipment, facilities and supplies)
Understanding the dreaded triple constraint
You can have it fast, cheap, or right; pick two. That, my friend, is the triple constraint of project management in a nutshell.
Coming to a logical balance of time,money, and quality is at the core of what a good project manager does throughout the life of a project.