The Project Manager’s Iron Triangle.
Good, cheap, fast – choose 2.
As unbreakable as… The Law of Gravity.
Most estimations are low-balled in order to secure the contract, with the intent to charge everything as a Change Order.
When queried about how that number was devised, the explanations start sounding like fiction as assumptions are treated as God’s Truth.
“We’ll use this cheap offshore team no ones heard of in Timbuktu but their day rate is only £2.50!”
“No one’s integrated Salesforce with the victorian sewage tunnels but we can make it work with standard Rest APIs! Easy!”
Risks are minimised and dismissed, assuming that everything will go swimmingly.
Part of the art of Project Management is to spot those risks, quantify them, and mitigate them so they are managed and controlled.
For when those Risks materialises and becomes Issues, that’s when costs start to spiral.
That leak, if not fixed, becomes a gushing plumbing nightmare.
That cough if not investigated, becomes a fatal disease.
Most quotes on proposals rarely, if ever, take into account the client, project and environment to incorporate the level of inherent risk.
Miss-sold, and miss-represented.
It’s never a good start.
And as a Project Manager, I will brace myself for another ‘character-building’ experience.
#projectmanagement
#irontriangle
#zenhaoprotip
#integrity