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July 12 Project CreepRecently I've been the victim of project creep. You've been there, right? What started out as a small project now involves months of work. In any case, it reminded me of a recent query from one of my students. We'd got off on a discussion of the "Iron Triangle" during an ASP.NET class. Here's the jist of what I told him ...
The Iron Triangle (also known as the Trade-Off Triangle) represents the relationships between resources available to the project, the schedule of the project, and the features of the finished product. These three, resources, schedule and features are often represented as three sides of a triangle. The idea is that if you increase or decrease any noe side of the triangle, you will have to adjust at least one other side to birng the triangle back into balance.
Usually one side of the triangle is fixed, i.e., we only have so much time, we absolutely need these x features, or we only have so much money. (Unlike your typical boss, who wants everything, with no cost, by close of business yesterday.) The Iron Triangle can also be represented in terms of a statement as follows:
Given fixed , we will choose a and adjust , accordingly. (Example: "Given fixed schedule, we will choose a resource allocation plan and adjust delivered features as necessary.")
How does this work in real life? Well ... in real life you're supposed to get a written document. Anything outside the scope as defined in the document is begging for a change order which describes the extra time or money required, or other features that need to be dropped. In my situation it's my boss ... who never gives me written documentation!
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