From the course: Project Management Simplified

Define the Iron Triangle

From the course: Project Management Simplified

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Define the Iron Triangle

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- In project management, we're setting out to deliver something new by the promised date and this would be easy if projects didn't also have a required level of quality and a limit to the money available. And that's where the real problems can start because it's impossible to have a really great project outcome, very quickly, for hardly any money. These three circles are present in every project. You can have high quality and speed if you pay a lot, or you can have it quick and cheap if it's not very good, and maybe you can have it cheap and good if you wait ages, but you certainly can't have all three of my circles. And that's why these three constraints are often called the Iron Triangle. Iron because it's really not negotiable, it's a law of nature. And yet, bosses always want all three for internal projects and customers always want all three for external projects that you might be selling to them, and it's often what salespeople promise to customers in order to get the job. All projects have the Iron Triangle to some degree. They all have something you're trying to deliver, they all have a finish date, and they all have a budget, even if you don't think much about the budget, there will always be one. So the first thing to do, and this is step one of my 12 step process, is to find out exactly what they want, and when they want it by, and how much they can afford. Then you have the information that you need in order to work out whether you can actually do it. Sometimes you can do it, but more often you're being asked for too much. But you always need to start by finding out exactly what the customer wants in terms of cost, quality, and time.

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