The Magic Project Management Triangle

Balancing the dimensions of time, scope, and resources is a widely applicable framework for managing projects of all scales. Whatever your title, as a project manager, managing stakeholders’ expectations and consistently performing successfully depends directly on your ability to set and deliver on your targets (scope) on-time (time) and on-budget (resources).

Today I am going to share the magic project management triangle.  That is my name for a classic conceptual tool that I have been using for so many decades that I cannot remember where I first learned about it.  It is a useful framework across a broad range of project management work. It defines the essential dimensions of a project, enables negotiating with project stakeholders over an entire project lifecycle, supports resource raising (also known as fundraising), and enables day-to-day project management.

Time-Scope-Resources Triangle Framework

Imagine a triangle with nodes labeled Time, Scope, and Resources. These are the dynamic dimensions that define a project.

• Scope: Scope is the work to be done to complete the project. Scope reflects the size of the project. Are you developing a national hospital network or a plan for Thanksgiving dinner? Is it a little project, a medium-sized project, or a massive project?
  
  
• Time: Time is the amount of time you have to complete the project. Time can be thought of both as the number of person-hours required to do the work as well as whatever elapsed time constraints may be relevant. When considering available time, think about externally imposed milestone requirements. It is a rare project that can be completed whenever. Most of the time, there is value in getting it done sooner rather than later.
  
  
• Resources: What resources are available to complete the project? What additional resources might be available or needed? Resources can include either people or money or both. There might be other resource constraints that need to factor into your evaluation of what is possible. Conversely, force multipliers for your project can include securing resources that provide exceptional quality and efficiency at an acceptable cost-benefit ratio.   

The concept of the triangle is so powerful because these three dimensions tradeoff against one another.  With experience, one learns that, generally, you can adjust the size of two of the three at will, but the third dimension must compensate for the other two’s positions. For example, if you have a massive project and a tight timeline, you will need a significant resource commitment to get the job done. Similarly, suppose you have an aggressive timeline and very limited resources (think bootstrapping startup). In that case, you need to prioritize and focus your scope down to only the most essential value-adding elements. Finally, suppose you are tackling a baby-making project. In that case, you know that your timeline is fixed at nine months, and the scope of the project is a new baby, it will not help the project go faster or produce a bigger baby to apply more women to the effort.  Nine women cannot make a baby in a month, no matter how sincerely they may try.

As a project manager, you take responsibility for delivery and execution by managing the project’s time, scope, and resources. Over the course of the project, it is typical for there to be pressure to fit more scope into a limited time and resource situation. The project management triangle helps you analyze and negotiate the changes that inevitably come up. For example, when your project sponsor asks you to double the project’s scope, your success will depend on your ability to frame the conversation positively. You might be able to say, “Sure, we can do that. Here are the implications for our timeline if we keep the team the same size. Alternatively, we might add some additional resources and take less of a hit on the timeline.” What you do not want to say is “Sure, we can do that [full-stop]” because that implies that either you had over-resourced your team in the first place or you put yourself at risk for failure because you cannot realistically just ask everyone to work twice as hard in a sustainable way. You would be wiser to negotiate the scope change, add resources, or add time to enable accomplishing the goals.

Now let me share a few examples of how I have used this framework to manage different projects and how it played out for me.

Application: Startup Fundraising Strategy

Startup fundraising strategies revolve around identifying a fundable milestone (scope) that the team can achieve with its current available team and funding (resources and time).  I typically approach this question thinking about what are the fundable accomplishments we can achieve in the coming, say 18 months (a typical funding time horizon). The moveable node of the triangle is primarily scope in the case of fundraising. However, some resource adjustments can be available if some high-priority milestones can be achieved with a smaller team. Determining the right scope to tackle and use as the focus of a fundraising pitch is determined by focusing on what will be considered a value-changing inflection point accomplishment(s). For example, target milestones might be the FDA clearance of a medical device, a $1M in commercial revenue, or particular product development accomplishments such as successful beta tests.  The options are constrained by the available team, capital, and burn rate, all of which are contributors to the time and resources nodes. Ruthless prioritization and focus are usually essential in scoping early-stage startups’ work to keep the pace of startup value creation progressing at an aggressive rate.

Application: Consulting Project

As management consultants, when we bid on a project, we were careful to define the scope, timeframe, and cost (resources) we were committing to.  There was always pressure to find the biggest, most impactful project the client could afford while ensuring that the expected cost-benefit from the project was very attractive. Inevitably, the client wanted more help than they could afford to invest, so the discussion would focus on prioritizing initiatives as we worked together to determine a scope that would maximize their bang for the buck.  All of this was memorialized in the scope of work documentation. The scope of work would always become important later in the project when adjustments were desired because it allowed for a client-consultant discussion about the tradeoffs between the new scope and available resources.  The discussion could explore whether the new scope could be achieved by cutting some other initiative, increasing available resources or time, depending on what was most valuable to the client.  What we did not do was simply expand the scope with no changes to resources and timelines.

Application: Software Development

Once we had a clinical study design that needed a narrowly scoped custom web application to support easy data collection. Our software development team was fully engaged in building our primary application, and we did not want to distract them from our core product development. So we went looking for an additional consulting resource to expand our team’s capacity to accomplish the clinical study app on an aggressive timeline in parallel.  We wanted the project done in less than a month. We got recommendations for two potential consultants, with whom we shared the same set of scope requirements and timeline. The difference in their proposals was stunning – and likely had everything to do with how they planned to accomplish the work (which directly impacted their perception of the amount of effort required to achieve the requirements). The first proposal was for $30,000 and required 2-3 months of work, which was outside our acceptable timeline.  The second proposal was for $7,500 to be completed in a week.  The disparity was significant enough to cause some consternation. Still, in the end, we opted to give the second consultant a try – and he delivered, actually over-delivered, on his promises. Before too long, we opted to hire that consultant full-time. He has continued to show us how his force multipliers allow him and his team to consistently achieve more scope on aggressive timelines with lower budget impacts.

These three examples from my business experience hopefully provide a useful spectrum of illustrations. Also, I have used this same framework when working with general contractors to build two custom homes, championing the installation of broadband internet for my neighborhood, organizing my daughter’s wedding, and myriad other situations. If you can define a chunk of work you are tackling as a “project,” especially when it involves multiple people, the principles will apply.