The Triple Constraint in Project Management: Time, Scope & Cost

1. Cost: The financial constraints of a project, also known as the project budget

2. Scope: The tasks required to fulfill the project’s goals

3. Time: The schedule for the project to reach completion

Cost- to control costs: monitor and control Standard vs Non-Standard Expenses on site

 Estimate the costs for all the tasks in the project scope

 Create a project budget based on the estimated costs of the project

 Use the project budget as a cost baseline, which is employed to control costs during project execution

 Control all project costs to keep spending under the project budget

 Adjust the project budget when necessary

Scope

To manage scope, project managers:

 Use a scope management plan to clearly define what project activities will be done

 Share the scope management plan with all stakeholders, so everybody is on the same page

 Use change orders to avoid scope creep and keep track of all changes made to the project scope

 Manage stakeholder’s expectations to maintain the project scope

Time

A Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is used to identify all the project activities. Then project managers can use
different scheduling techniques such as the critical path method or PERT charts to determine the total
duration of the project.

Here’s what project managers do to control the project schedule:

 Use a Gantt chart to visualize the project schedule, define task sequences and monitor the duration of
each task

 Create policies, procedures and documentation for planning, executing and monitoring the project
schedule

 Allocate resources effectively using a resource schedule to avoid bottlenecks

 Compare the schedule baseline to actual progress to determine if projects are on track