Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
It seems paradoxical to say that what form of decision making will be imple-
mented must be decided before decisions are made, but it is necessary. The
benefits of speed and conciseness of oversight decisions need to be weighed
against the benefit of more thorough and developed plans and ideas that develop
from a shared decision making process.
11.1.3 Identify Project Constraints
Wiegers finds that it is possible to build software faster and cheaper. Yet, software
development time and creativity are inversely related. You can't accelerate crea-
tivity, and software development is a highly creative activity. High-quality de-
liverables may take a bit longer to initially release, but they save you much time in
the long run because you don't have to do extensive testing and rework to fix and
maintain them. Software with stringent quality demands, such as safety-critical
systems, is expensive because it's imperative to remove defects. The tradeoffs are
real, and a project manager must make tradeoffs along five dimensions: features
(or scope), quality, staff, cost, and schedule. Some people add an additional
dimension, risk. Each dimension fits in one of three broad categories:
• Constraints impose boundaries and restrictions within which the team must
operate. For constraints, state the immovable limit.
• Drivers identify key project success goals. Drivers typically afford the project
manager a bit of latitude, but they define important targets toward which the
team must work.
• Degrees of freedom are factors the project manager can adjust within certain
limits. For degrees of freedom, identify the allowable range within which the
project manager must operate.
It's important to classify the five project dimensions into these three categories
early in your project. One way to represent this information is with a flexibility
diagram, illustrated in Fig.
11.2
. A flexibility diagram has the five normalized axes
extend radially from a center point. A point is plotted for each dimension on a scale
that ranges from 0 (a constraint) to 10 (complete flexibility). Figure
11.2
illustrates a
flexibility diagram for a hypothetical shrink-wrap software package. The point
plotted at zero on the schedule axis indicates that schedule is a constraint. Cost and
quality are degrees of freedom that offer more flexibility for the project manager.
Connecting the points on all five axes creates an irregularly-shaped pentagon. The
flexibility diagram is a qualitative tool intended to help the key stakeholders discuss
project constraints and success drivers (Wiegers
2009
). It should be noted however
that this is merely a tool. Also note that the smaller the pentagon, the more con-
strained the project is resulting in a lower chance of it being fully successful.
Managers often think of schedule as being a constraint when it's really a driver. With
proper understanding of a project's drivers and constraints, the project manager can
