What Is The Project Management Triangle?

A project management triangle is a project management model. It proposes that managing three constraints—cost, scope and time—leads to a quality final deliverable. These constraints interconnect and must continually be balanced. When a change is made to one constraint, adjustments are required to one or both of the other constraints to maintain quality. This model is also called the iron triangle, golden triangle, project triangle and triple constraint.

The project management triangle helps project managers manage risks and change easier, pinpoint and manage project priorities well and offer clear communication to clients. In the end, with these factors well managed, the project is more likely to produce a quality final deliverable. Below is a deeper look at these benefits and how they work in real time.

Manage Change Easier

The triangle offers a clear understanding of the correlation between scope, cost and time as it relates to quality. For example, if a project has a hard deadline and a change in scope occurs, project managers know to look at the third constraint to relieve the pressure. They can do so by, for example, adding talent to speed the project along despite a scope increase. As such, the triangle offers unique insights into how to manage change effectively and efficiently.

Priority Clarification

Knowing the three constraints in a project management triangle makes it easier to pinpoint and manage priorities to create a quality final deliverable. Consider a project with a strict budget. Given the constraints, the project manager knows he or she must closely monitor its scope and time. After all, if the scope increases, the budget will likely have to increase as well. And, added time requires more paid resources—such as salaries—to cover that time.

Easier Client Communication

Your clients lean on you to manage projects to quality outcomes. They expect you to know project management best practices. By extension, they may not know a lot about the subject. So, it is the project manager’s job to help them understand the impact of changes in clear, layman’s terms. The project triangle offers a clear visual to help explain dependencies between cost, time and scope, and inform them of how one change affects these constraints.

Reduce Risk

These three benefits come together to reduce project risk. Knowing which priorities are key to effective project management allows risk management planners to create plans around them. Change management plans can also incorporate the correlation of the three constraints to ensure one change does not derail the project’s quality. Finally, clear client communication keeps satisfaction high even if risks arise, thereby keeping them from worsening.

A project management triangle has three components—or constraints—that are often depicted as the three sides to the triangle. These include the project’s scope, cost and time. When balanced correctly, they produce quality. Making a change in a project’s scope, time or cost requires an adjustment to the other two components to keep them in balance. If one is not in balance, one side of the triangle may be too long or too short and break the triangle.

Project Management Triangle

Here is an overview of each of these components:

Scope

The triangle’s scope component refers to the size of the project being completed. The size is measured in terms of project quality, complexity, quantity or magnitude of deliverable(s), detail, number of features and the capacity of the deliverable (such as the number of users a software can support). Unmanaged and unintended scope creep—a negative increase in the project’s requirements—must be avoided to keep the project’s cost and time under control.

Some example choices that help to balance scope include:

• Adding or removing resources
• Employing a change management plan to keep scope in check
• Cutting nice-to-have tasks to make more room for priority ones
• Extending the project’s deadline

Cost

A project’s cost includes paid resources needed for the project. Paid resources may be talent, raw materials, equipment, facilities, inventory, tools and even key opportunities. You must, for example, pay for human talent and facilities used to complete your project. Cost is often closely tied to time. Little changes such as removing a team member can make the project take longer. Time, by extension, is often a paid resource that can break the project triangle.

Some example choices that help to balance cost include:

• Reallocating resources from nice-to-have tasks to priority tasks
• Negotiating costs with vendors and contractors
• Replacing expensive resources with lower-cost alternatives
• Removing tasks from the project

Time

The time component of the triangle includes the project’s overall timeline, number of hours team members work on the project, time intervals it takes to complete each milestone, and planning and strategizing time. Managing time often requires an adjustment of scope and budget. If a scope change is made, for example, you may have to pay for an additional team member to complete the project on time and keep inventory and talent costs lower.

Some example choices that help to manage time include:

• Shortening tasks by adding resources or talent
• Removing tasks that are not required
• Encouraging team members to responsibly multitask
• Allocating more experienced talent to more complex tasks (to reduce the time-consuming learning curve)
• Extending the deadline

The way(s) to successfully manage a project management triangle will depend on the project, its priorities, its propensity for risk and your team’s experience and resources. However, five strategies to consider when managing a project triangle include choosing a flexible constraint, listing features in order of most to least importance, creating risk and change management plans and matching your management methodology to your priority constraint.

Here are five possible ways to manage your project management triangle:

1. Choose at Minimum One Flexible Constraint

As you look at the three constraints in your triangle—cost, time and scope—have a clear understanding from your client or team regarding which are the most important to them. Work with your team or client to pinpoint one of these constraints with which flexibility is allowed. Having this conversation upfront allows you to know how to adjust when the project does not always go as envisioned.

For example, if a client must stick to a deadline and a delay happens, it may make sense to hire more talent to speed things up. Or, if cost is the priority for your client, you might extend the deadline to avoid new hires. Likewise, if your client wants to add new features as customer feedback trickles in but is insistent on finishing on time, clearly communicate that your team needs permission to be flexible on the budget to make this happen.

2. Clarify Nice-to-Haves

Get together with your client, development team and quality assurance team to take a deep look at features in your project’s final deliverable(s). Make a big list of every feature expected. Then, just as you asked your client which constraint is most important, now ask which features are most important and which are simply nice to have. Order all features from most important (required) to least important (nice to have, if priority constraints allow).

This list will help you throughout your project execution to know how to keep your constraints in check while also keeping client satisfaction high. For example, if one feature will require a larger budget than planned due to a raw-materials price boost, you can look at the bottom of your features priority list to decide which nice-to-have feature can be removed to make room in the budget for an increase in a priority-feature price.

3. Create a Risk Management Plan

When managing project risks, set clear expectations and update your team frequently using proactive communication. This communication should begin before project initiation and extend throughout the entire project.

To begin, create a project management plan and present it to clients and project-execution team members. This plan should clearly address the scope of the project. It should also include a risk management plan that shows stakeholders what might go wrong, triggers that might initiate these risks and plans for addressing them. These plans should address how the budget, scope and schedule will change if such risks occur.

Then, during project execution, communicate at the very first sign of a risk trigger with your execution team and your clients. Efficient decision-making is often less likely to happen in the midst of an already out-of-control crisis. Proactive communication, however, helps to keep your triangle balanced by giving you the most options for getting your project back on track.

For example, if a task is to take longer than expected, communicate why the delay happened to your team and client. Then, keep your time—and, by extension, cost—in check by convening your team to plan which talent will be moved from less pressing tasks to the bottleneck task before a standstill happens. All the while, keep your client up to date on your decisions. Proactive communication shows competency and keeps satisfaction high.

4. Create a Change Management Plan

Managing constraints means managing change. If everything goes as planned and you have an agreed-upon cost, time and scope document from project initiation, managing your project triangle will require very little effort. It is when things change—a client suddenly wants a new feature added, for example—that your scope, time and budget go awry. But, if you manage change well, your triangle’s constraints are more likely to stay within satisfactory parameters.

Managing change well begins with creating a clear and actionable change management plan, then following it when change requests are made. A solid change management plan should include several components to address the following:

• Change management roles. Who is and is not authorized to receive change requests and assess them for approval or rejection? Who will be involved in the execution of approved change requests? Who should be a part of adjusting project constraints—scope, time and cost—to make room for approved changes?
• Limitations. Record constraints that are off limits when it comes to adjusting to change. Record the constraints that can be more flexibly adjusted to respond to change.
  Change-request approval or rejection process. How will change requests be submitted, assessed, approved or rejected?
• Change-request time frame parameters. In what time frame should change requests be assessed, approved, rejected or implemented? When is it too late for change requests to be considered?
• The change in the communication process. How will approved change requests be recorded and executed? How will team members who aren’t authorized to manage change communicate around change?
• Change management tools. What tools will be used to ensure only necessary changes are made, manage the change-request process, create transparency around change, allow for collaboration around approved changes and track changes?

5. Match a Management Methodology to Your Priority Constraint(s)

There are many project management methodologies to consider but some are more commonly used than others. Waterfall, Agile and Lean are three methodologies that are highly tested and tried in project management. Each is better at managing some constraints over others. Matching your methodology to your project priorities can help to ensure ease of constraint management.

Here is a closer look at each common project management methodology and what constraints they best help to manage:

Waterfall

This methodology is linear with clearly planned project stages that must be completed in the same order in which they are recorded. Because the phases are set, adjustments to their time and scope are very difficult to manage as one change will likely affect the entire project. This methodology is best for projects in which scope and time are rigid but there is some flexibility around the cost.

Agile

This methodology best fits projects that need constant adaptations to deliver the most relevant value to the end user. An example of an Agile methodology is Scrum. In Scrum, the objective is set. However, products, solutions and deliverables are allowed to evolve based on new information. Agile fits projects that need iterative product development—or flexible scope. Speed is a strength of this methodology while predictable costs are not as likely.

Lean

Lean helps project management teams reduce waste, particularly around cost and scope while focusing on customer value. The project is mapped out from start to finish, then heavily analyzed to reduce waste, such as idle employee time and unnecessary processes. The execution team is instructed to only take action if the customer asks for it. The Lean methodology is a fit for projects that will likely have few risks or scope changes and where cost is a priority.

While a plethora of project management tools are available to businesses, project managers must be careful to look at their features closely to ensure they meet their unique needs. For example, monday.com is best suited for teams needing to manage a project’s three constraints affordably. ClickUp offers tools for Agile teams to track constraints through product iterations. Teamwork is best for managing constraints for client-facing teams.

Here is a closer look at three tools to help you manage your project management triangle:

monday.com

With a free plan for two-person teams, monday.com also offers paid plans starting at $8 per month per user for larger teams. It is a full-featured project management software with plenty of tools to help you manage your project management triangle. Automation tasks, for example, allow you to set alerts that notify you if the project goes over budget or if tasks fall behind schedule. And, Gantt and Kanban charts help you track your progress and prepare for next steps.

ClickUp

If you need software to manage your triangle’s constraints while using an Agile project management model, ClickUp is a great choice. Offering a free plan and paid plans starting at $5 per month per user, ClickUp offers the ability to track progress via task boards, Kanban and Gantt charts, checklists and recipe-based automations. Collaboration tools such as real-time editing and calendar sync allow teams to iterate product development as needed.

Teamwork

Teamwork is a software uniquely suited for client-facing teams to ensure project requirements are met. Clients can join the platform to track project success in real time and even comment to ensure continual understanding of the project’s scope. And, if you need to add freelancers to manage your time constraint, they can join for free, too, via the “unlimited collaborators feature.” Finally, budget tracking ensures you can manage your cost constraint like a pro.

For more project management tools to help you manage project constraints, read our project management software buyer’s guide for 2024.

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A project management triangle keeps the whole project management team’s eyes on key variables that make or break a final quality deliverable. Despite the fact that there are only three constraints to manage in the triangle, managing their dependent relationships is a complex process. As such, we advise project managers to avoid managing these constraints without the right tools. Lean on project management software to make your job easier.