Describe the triple constraint. What are the three components and what is the relationship between them.
Scope, time, and cost are the three key areas of a project that need to be managed at all times. Scope deals with the size and the reach of the project, time simply refers to how long a project will take to complete, and cost is the amount of money the organization is investing in the project.
While each of these areas can be analyzed separately, it is far more beneficial to view them as a unit. Hence the term triple constraint. Scope, time, and cost are permanently linked to one another, and changes in one constraint can easily affect the others. For example, let's say that a company has reached the implementation phase of a new human resources project. The Human Resource Director was thinking about the system over the weekend and thought of a new feature that would be a great addition to the system. First thing Monday morning, the Human Resource Director contacts the Project Manager and offers their new suggestion. At this point, the project has gone through its planning, analysis, and design phases. Incorporating a new feature at this point in time might not be an easy task. Adding new features when a project is mid process is an example of scope creep. As scope increases, so does the time it will take to complete the project. Additionally, if a project takes more time to complete, then it will cost more. Even if the new feature requires a week of one programmers work and no additional hardware, that is still a week of paying that programmer that wasn't included in the initial schedule.
As you can see, a change to one area of constraint easily causes changes to be made to the other two areas of constraint.
This post clearly defines what triple constraint is and why it is important. I like how an example has been used to demonstrate the constraint relationships and how emphatic they can be on one and another.
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