The Triple Constraints in Project Management

By Michael S. Dobson PMP

From the novice to the most experienced and senior project manager, triple constraint issues are at the core of the most crucial decisions about a project. The Triple Constraints in Project Management explores the triangle of time, cost, and performance that bounds the universe within which every project must be accomplished – and shows how controlling the hierarchy of constraints can mean the difference between success and failure on virtually any project.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 1, 2004
• ISBN: 9781567264531

Michael S. Dobson PMP

Michael S. Dobson, PMP has written five previous books on project management topics, as well as numerous books on management, office politics, and military/alternate history. He speaks and consults worldwide on project management topics for government and private industry. Michael has been vice president of Discovery Software International; vice president of Games Workshop (US); director of new product development and marketing for TSR, Inc.; president of a career counseling and strategy firm; and a member of the team that built and opened the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum.

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CHAPTER 1

The Art of Strategic Failure

You probably won’t see American Movie Classics run a festival of Great Project Management Movies any time soon, but if they did, Ron Howard’s motion picture Apollo 13, based on the real-life story, would be a natural candidate. Faced with a potentially disastrous accident, project teams overcome one potentially fatal barrier after another to bring the crew safely back to the earth, guided by mission director Gene Kranz’ mantra, Failure is not an option.

But, of course, failure is an option. Sometimes, in fact, it looks like the most likely option of all. The odds in the actual Apollo 13 disaster were stacked against a happy outcome, and everyone—including Gene Kranz—had to be well aware of that fact. At the same time, letting the idea of failure into your mind can be a psychological trap that leads you to premature surrender.

Within the overall project Get the astronauts home safely, there are a number of subprojects, including:

Develop a power-up sequence that draws fewer than 20 amps.

Calculate a burn to get the reentry angle within tolerance using the earth in the capsule window as the sole reference point.

Design a way to fit the square command module CO2 scrubber filter into the round Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) filter socket.

That last subproject is vital, because the LEM’s CO2 scrubbers are meant to take care of the needs of two people for a day and a half, not three people for three days. And nobody ever imagined that the command module scrubbers would need to be used in the LEM, so they were not designed to be compatible. They’re square, and the necessary holes are round. Meanwhile, the CO2 levels have gone up past 8, and at 15 things become dangerous, and eventually deadly. Gene Kranz assigns a project team: "I suggest you gentlemen invent a way to put a square peg in a round