A recent post on PM
HUT speaks about Balancing Quality, Schedule and Cost. Ignoring for
the moment that Technical Performance Measures (TPM) are the new
description of the olde PMBOK use of Quality.
These TPMs address Measures of Effectiveness (MoE) and Measures of Performance (MoP). These and the Key Performance Indicators (KPP) include product or service quality.
Once the project is baselined - and not baselining in some way, is a major failure mode of most projects that are headed to the ditch - the connections between cost, schedule, and technical performance is a NET SUM Game. Changing one value impacts the other values.
With a baselined cost, schedule, and technical performance, there is no way to create new time, new budget.
So "balancing" these "Trade Spaces" is done BEFORE the baseline is struck. At that point everything is up for trade options. After the baseline, only a change request can make change to undo what was baselined. This sounds so formal and draconian - it is not. You can manage the change processes in as light or as heavy a manner as needed. If you're flying to moon you do one thing. If you're building an emerging web site for internal use you do something else. But no change control on the baseline, usually means chaos reigns from day one and never gets better.
The conjecture that
These days, the world is moving so fast that you have to constantly check to see if you are still on target for delivering value, even if quality, schedule and cost constraints are met. Technology cannot do this for you; it is a subtle, complicated process that requires market research and an understanding of your customers, for starters.
is actually NOT true. This is where technology can help the most. With a baselined cost, schedule, and connections to the technical requirements, an integration of these three factors provides visibility into schedule and cost performance against the technical performance.
The Technical Performance Measures are defined by Measures of Effectiveness and Measures of Performance along with the Measures of Physical Percent Complete. The briefing Knowing What Done Looks Like, Connecting the Dots Between Technical Performance Measures, Earned Value, and Physical Percent Complete is one starting point for addressing this Ponzi scheme found in many project domains.
