(Part 2) Triple Constraint Theory Fails in the Field; capturing value and transforming the PM

When the notion of the triple constraints is deeply challenged, we discover that it fails to consider something very fundamental; that a project, within a complex organizational setting, is not just an activity by a team of people to produce an end or achieve a scope. The traditional Oxford Dictionary definition of a project is, “an individual or collaborative enterprise that is carefully planned and designed to achieve a particular aim.”  Instead, for us, a project has come to mean something slightly more complex, yet far more manageable, as we begin to account for influences that are traditionally thought of as beyond the scope of project management. 

What if we describe a project as a discrete opportunity to capture or retain as much value as possible from a larger value potential, through a set of coordinated and controlled activities?   Notice the change from specific outcome to value. This may be a slight change in perspective, but the impact of the reframing is substantial. We now have the ability and desire to focus on maximizing the strategic and implicit value of the project for the organization, however it may be derived. To put it simply, project managers are driven to facilitate many value-based decisions while managing projects. 

For example, let’s say that there are two ways to conduct quality control on components being developed in a project.  One way is to use internal staff; the other is to outsource the effort.  From within the Iron Triangle, it may be easy to shift work from internal resources to a vendor, trade cost for time, but now any lessons that might improve production quality are more likely to be lost and project management and production could become mired in reactionary QC fixes.  Such is the fate of many projects.  The value opportunity in this case may be to derive a QC process that exposes quality issues to the production team so that it identifies systemic issues. Doing so may require more time and cost, at least initially, but may not even be considered if the focus for decision-making is rooted in staying true to the Iron Triangle to achieve project success. 

The project sponsor typically also has division/team responsibilities that are enduring.  Projects come and go, as they should, but to ignore the larger context of the project will often result in solution decisions that leave organizational value unrecovered. To facilitate these types of decisions from inside an Iron Triangle prison ignores a great deal of value that a project can deliver and remember, that value is eventually considered in the true measurement of project success.

When the notion of a project is changed from an aim or scope focused activity to one that is opportunity-driven, something more holistic, more complex, and even closer to reality emerges. The scope of project also includes the amount of value that can be captured by an organization from a larger potential of value.  The project’s activities are truly constrained not by a project sponsor’s perception of that value, but by the total intrinsic value of the larger opportunity, even though the sponsor is ultimately charged with setting the constraints based on their perception of potential value. As a sponsor’s awareness of the value potential changes, so does the scope and so do the constraints. Therein lies the hidden control element for project managers.

Projects are rarely incepted to capitalize on marginal value opportunities. They are generally undertaken because of changing environment or recognized breakthroughs, where the value potential far outweighs the risk of the project. Stated more visually, if an ocean of value appears before an organization, a project is created to capture as much of the value potential as possible by the application of the organization’s resources. The application of resources is governed by the perception of the project sponsor and it correlates to how big this ocean of value truly is. A project sponsor might initially establish rudimentary project constraints in the form of those in the Iron Triangle, but they will not attempt to expand these rudimentary constraints to cover the entire ocean of potential value.  Never is all value captured – it is impossible to cover the ocean.  For this reason, you could visualize the Iron Triangle floating in an ocean of potential value.

When you look at it like this, the sides of Iron Triangle, or any other constraint model for that matter, appear conspicuously artificial and difficult to reconcile with the true value and constraints of the project.  One of the biggest issues here is that the value captured is hardly ever truly represented by the project’s scope, because it so difficult to quantify.  Even more striking, as a project evolves and contributes to an increasing knowledge and awareness of the ocean of potential value, the scope changes for good reason! And, so should constraints change.  This is the reality of practical project management in the field, whether perceived or not by the project manager.

What if the project manager could help clarify and improve the fidelity of the sponsor’s perception of the total value potential of the project for the organization?  What if project managers, through the persistent use of the Socratic Method, could continuously challenge the notion of scope and constraints while simultaneously increasing clarity and fidelity of the perception of a project’s true value potential? 

The project sponsor’s role is to understand, in increasingly greater fidelity, the ocean of potential value, determine how much can be captured safely, adjust the scope of project as new information becomes available, and manage, free and constrain resources accordingly.  In essence, the sponsor’s job is to create and foster a project to capture and achieve as much gain in value as possible, given the business conditions that exist for the organization. Sometimes, maybe often, the sponsor of a project is a blind surrogate, has not taken suitable time, or has not made the necessary investment into determining the strategic value potential that a project could capture.   It is clearly the sponsor’s role to understand the strategic implications and the efforts they endorse. Project managers must encourage, perhaps insist on, full participation in this role.

For the skilled Project Manager, this notion unlocks new capabilities and opportunities for significance. The traditional PM role is now destroyed, or at least transformed; expanded beyond the concrete walls of the Iron Triangle or any constraint model and liberated to achieve a higher potential of performance.  Practically speaking, the project manager can, while tightly managing the project within all of its scope and constraints, now also contribute to achieving strategic value that was not previously considered. We can finally work with sponsors, not for them (see the Three Sided Table as discussed in Bare Knuckled Project Management; How to Succeed in Every Project, by the authors of this post).

To accomplish this, we test, push and question everything.  We test constraints to see where they fail, come up short, overestimate or under deliver.  We test sponsor perception (gently, politically, respectfully, and with a dose of empathy) of the intrinsic project value or value potential perceived.   We communicate an increasingly clear value potential to the other team members and constituents, facilitate a broader understanding of why they are doing what we tasked them to do, and simultaneously opening the door for even more fidelity in capturing potential value.  Conversely, when it seems that the perception of value might be larger than the project’s intrinsic value to an organization (potential value stated in a different way), we test and challenge the notions of project sponsors and are likely to end these projects fast, before they cost to organization too much. 

This holistic notion of a project, the role of the sponsor, the project’s purpose to capture as much value as possible for an organization, challenges and fundamentally changes how we score project success.  We see this as being completely in alignment with the ultimate reframing of a project and project manager using the three-sided table project management construct.  The addition of this expanded view of constraint management is the complement to the three-sided table, which dramatically increases the quality of the outcome of the project.  This model unlocks unlimited opportunities to achieve more organization value from quality implementations and projects.   Scope changes, constraints change and the projects succeed MORE!

Success, within this project definition cannot simply be managed by achieving scope on-time and on-budget.  The constraints within a project are fluid and are tied to the perception of the maximum intrinsic value that a project can bring to an organization, which is constantly being refined during a project as new information becomes known.  This aligns to our experience as practical project managers in the field. 

Project failure is rarely perceived as the inability to achieve the scope on time or on budget.  Our observation using this model is quite contrary – even when a project is not achieved on time or on budget, they are rarely considered failures by the project sponsor or organization.  Only those that consume resources and do not capture a corresponding level of value are considered failures.  This awareness of the constraints and their inextricable linkage to project value, in conjunction with a reframing of the role of the project manager explains this outcome for us. This is the model that we use in the field to practically manage our customers’ project, achieve consistently predictable outcomes, and retain customers.

Typical measures of project success seem rudimentary and even unsophisticated when used in light of this framework. They no longer work.  The Standish Group and Gartner Group metrics are misleading at best within this framework.  To develop and empower project managers, we will need a new measurement framework going forward.  One that measures the awareness of the project manager of a project’s maximum intrinsic value, skill in leading a team to develop their awareness of value potential, and the ability to capture the project’s intended value or more.  Those that do well in the framework will be known as effective project managers.  Those who don’t or can't will be imprisoned within the Iron Triangle.

[This was excerpted from our recent submission to PM Magazine.  Jeff Welch and I welcome critical comments and we will respond.]