I feel quite fortunate!
Long gone are these dreadful Friday afternoons.
You know, these days when you have to face bad news on your top project, at an increased risk of missing a critical deadline, instead of easing into a relaxing weekend,
For years, like many leaders, I’ve struggled with my team’s difficulty in accurately estimating our development projects.
We had adopted the Agile methodology for our software projects. It helped smooth our delivery and divide projects into chewable chunks. But prioritizing and estimating user stories were still tricky at best.
After trying different approaches, I realized that no prioritization methodology or estimate would work without a deep shared understanding of a core principle.
It’s called the Iron Triangle.
Let me reassure you!
It has nothing to do with the Iron Triangle, known in the U.S. as the three-way political relationship between Congress, an administrative agency, and a special interest group.
Like when Monsanto executives appointed to the U.S. Department of Agriculture started giving more power to GMO crop producers through Congress.
No, I’m referring to something else. Think of it like every project is a triangle made of time, money, and scope; shortening the length of one side will lengthen one or both of the other sides.
The Iron Triangle helps any project leader make stronger decisions and better assess risks.
The three “points” on the triangle are interdependent.
For example, the bigger the project’s size, the more time or resources are required to complete it. Without the necessary time or resources, you will need to reduce the scope of your project.
You might think an increase in budget and resources will systematically help increase the scope or decrease the time it takes to deliver. Or maybe, can you take longer to deliver, and you’ll be okay?
Well, think again. In real life, most teams face business imperatives, and both the timing and the costs tend to be the most constrained.
So, assuming you don’t want to mess with quality, the only thing you can control in most projects is the scope.
Once you master this concept, you can start to put your desired scope under the microscope and prioritize the user stories and features.
Such prioritizations can work in various ways, and many negotiations can take place. I won’t belabor the topic of these many prioritization approaches, as I already covered it in a past article: 3 Principles To Better Prioritize Features For Your Next Product.
But remember, no prioritization will work if your team is not aligned on the Iron Triangle principle. The essence of the Iron Triangle is not negotiable. Everything else is.
Many people hate it and think they might be able to defy the law of project gravity.
Still, the most predictable teams I’ve worked with were the ones that understood the intimate relationship between the three sides of the triangle: time, cost, and scope!
Even better, it doesn’t have to be limited to software project in high-tech: the Iron Triangle will benefit any kind of project.