4.1. triple constraints (time, scope, cost)

Arch. Dania Abdel-Aziz

Triple constraints (time, scope, cost)

11/7/2017 1Arch. Dania Abdel-Aziz/ Lecture 4.1

University of Jordan Year 2016/2017 Second Summer Semester

Contents

11/7/2017 Arch. Dania Abdel-Aziz/ Lecture 4.1 2

Introducing Constraints Techniques

• Triple constraints

• Success Sliders

• Project Constraints

• What Do You Mean, “All Scope”?

• This is More That Just Mechanics

The concept of Triple constraints is simple and quite effective.

• On any given project, there are fundamentally three constraints,

1. The amount of work you’re going to deliver.

2. The amount of money you’re willing to spend.

3. How long the project can run.



Project cost: the amount the customer has agreed to pay for acceptable project deliverables.

• The project cost is based on a budget that includes an estimate of the cost associated with the various resources that will be used to accomplish the project.

Project schedule (TIME): time table that specific when each activity should be start and finish.

As the name implies, these are constraints imposed upon a project, “you must finish by 12/31/17” that will be used to determine if a project was successful or not.




Project scope (/Quality): is the scope of a project/ all work must be done to satisfy the customer that the deliverables meet the requirements or acceptance criteria agreed upon at the onset of the project.

• The scope itself is generally identified up front so as to give the project the best chance of success.

• Although scope can potentially change during the project life-cycle, a concept known as ‘scope creep’

Note that the common success measure for the scope aspect of a project is its inherent quality upon delivery.


As the triangle image demonstrates, you can constrain on up to two dimensions, but not all three.



Thus, you could engage with a project sponsor in an earnest discussion about where you would put the prioritizing focus for a given project.

Three common cases:

1. Single Constraint.

2. Double Constraint.

3. The cop out.



Single Constraint:

• The first example is a pretty straight forward single constraint where the delivery of a set number of features is most important, while schedule & budget being less important.


Example; • Hospital project (health care facility).• Hotel project (luxury). • would be Blizzard entertainment, who explicitly

refuses to announce release dates in advance for their games, rather insisting they build them properly.


“done when it’s done“.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/01/19/blizzard-ceo-calls-shipping-an-unfinished-product-devastating/

Double Constraint:

• In this case, we are prioritizing one of the two constraints over the other.


Example: • Stadium for Olympics.• Festival at the roman theatre.• A colleague working with an entertainment

company. He had a specific team (fixed budget) and was building a new application for an upcoming sporting event. Thus, if they didn’t release by a given date, the application was worthless. In this case, the scope of what they

release was actually the least important thing.


The cop out:

• In this case, the sponsor basically puts the focus exactly in the middle, saying that everything is important.

• One of the failure models for this approach.


As you can imagine, this does not set up a project for success, as we have no flexibility along any dimensions.


cop out : An excuse designed to shirk responsibility. Placing blame on something else to make things easier for yourself

SUCCESS SLIDERS


Success Sliders

Success Sliders ”exploring more than just three dimensions when considering the success of a project”.

It was introduced by Rob Thomsett.

• This technique offer the ability to break apart that ambiguous concept called “scope”, or prioritize other dimensions like quality and team experience.

Indeed, you can use this type of model to prioritize along a virtually infinite number of criteria.


Success Sliders

There are two common implementations of this technique:

1. Force ranking.

2. Single prioritization.


1. Force ranking.

• In this example, a number of stakeholders each individually had to force rank the priority of a number of different criteria such as:

• “Stability”,

• “Adaptability of system”,

• “High Quality”,

• “Deliver Project on Time”.

• Each individual stakeholder’s values are represented with a different colour.

The precise list may vary from project to project.


Success Sliders

• This example shows how different stakeholders show their perspective of priorities so that discrepancies can be discussed and reconciled before a project falls into duress.


Success Sliders

2. Single prioritization.

The ultimate goal is a single prioritization.

This example is different in two counts.

• First, it represents a single set of agreed upon values.

• Second, it is not force ranked, but rather a budget.


Success Sliders

• You can only increase the priority of one dimension by lowering the priority of another.

• This sort of tool, especially when used with a number of stakeholders, can be an excellent way to work through different expectations and amongst different stakeholders.

However, this technique also introduces some limitations.

• It can’t quite distinguish what the absolute criteria is.

• We can focus on dimensions, but are the top 3 deal breakers? What about the top 4? There still is some ambiguity we need to cut through.


Success Sliders

This is a screen shot from a tool made available by Mike Cohn on his website.

http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tools/project-success

3. PROJECT CONSTRAINTS


3. Project Constraints

Jim Highsmith proposed the use of identifying project constraints to as a way of reinventing the triple constraint.

His argument is that those dimensions can be prioritized into:

1. “Fixed”.

2. “Flexible”.

3. “Accept”.

but those can additionally be illustrated with threshold criteria.


http://books.google.com/books?id=VuFpkztwPaUC&pg=PT151&dq=Jim+Highsmith+Sections+of+the+PDS&hl=en&ei=rDWiTouGBtSDtgfYwt2qBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA


Example:

• The primary constraint is schedule, the application must launch by 3/1/11.

• The flexible constraint is budget.



Example:

• In this case there is an existing team, so while there is a little bit of flexibility with the budget, this dimension shouldn’t move too much.

• The final constraint is that they can generally accept an application that can provide scores and game highlights.

• Thus we see the project team must deliver the application by the specified date while adhering to the general burn rate it currently has in order to opportunistically deliver whatever functionality it can within those constraints.


The concept of a fixed constraint compared to a flexible constraint can be applied to the broader set of criteria identified in our earlier exercise.

Example:



WHAT DO YOU MEAN, “ALL SCOPE”?


What Do You Mean, “All Scope”?

Regardless of which of these more detailed techniques you may use, clearly breaking apart the “scope” dimension is critical.

• Many projects blindly say something like, “our new system should deliver all the scope of the old system”, without really doing any analysis of exactly what that is.

• Indeed, finding that the question of scope can usually be broken into smaller pieces:

1. Break by users.

2. Break by business objectives.



1. Break by users:

Some projects have a wide array of user.

Ex, applications in general is used by different user times or clients who use an application differently.

In this case, you may want to identify different dimensions to prioritize.

Example:

you could take an online book store and break it apart by the different roles and say something like the functionality for an online book shopper is the highest priority, as they are the ones actually buying the books. Support for wholesalers providing the books and your administrative support staff may be lower priorities for your first release.


2. Break by business objectives:

Many projects have hard interdependencies or down stream processes that require time in order to deliver their own functionality.

Example:hypothetical project book store project.



THIS IS MORE THAT JUST MECHANICS


This is More That Just Mechanics


While these exercises might seem pretty straightforward and simple, sometimes they can be quite contentious.

There are some anti-patterns when trying to use these types of techniques:

“We already know what the priority is” – frequently a project manager or sponsor may state quite simply that this level of detail is not important, because they already agree on it.

In these cases, sometimes the easiest thing is to ask them simply to write it down and compare it to what some other major stakeholders think.

Frequently, this will reveal enough inconsistency that they realize they need to entertain a more detailed discussion about criteria

“But I’m the sponsor, Isn’t this simply my decision?” – sometimes project sponsors may feel offended that you are trying to democratize what they see as their decision to make. It’s very important to be clear about the point of this type of exercise and how you will use it to make decisions.

• Chances are, a project sponsor funding the project will ultimately make the prioritization decisions and define the final criteria.

• Use success sliders or constraints to surface the expectations and perspectives of other stakeholders so that the sponsor can make the best informed decision.

• There’s a chance they may know something the sponsor doesn’t and the discussion will help lead the group to a better decision.



“This is ALL important” –

• Some groups of stakeholders may be unable to parse more detailed criteria. Rather, they may have a very hard time saying precisely what is or isn’t critical for success.

• This is usually where a force ranking, can be most valuable.

• Before even engaging in a discussion about which dimensions are truly must have, or even the precise dimensions, stakeholders must simply prioritize in a force ranked order.



Thank you


Education

4.1. triple constraints (time, scope, cost)