Chapter 9 ideas - Balancing Cost, Schedule, and Quality

Conclusion

·        Project manager has to balance cost, schedule and quality/feature of the project as the project being implemented.

·        Some balancing can be done by the project team alone.  Some have to be decided by the sponsor or by the executives of the organization.

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3 levels of balancing a project:

-        Project level

-        Business case level

-        Enterprise level

Project Level

·        Re-estimate the project

·        Change schedule to take advantage of the "float"

·        Add people to the project

·        Increase productivities (internal vs. external experts)

·        Outsource

·        "Crashing the Schedule"

·        Overtime

Not reduce quality, but may reduce features, for example, from 8 to 5…

Business Case Level

·        Reduce product scope

·        Fixed-phase scheduling

·        Fast-tracking (parallel tasks)

·        Phased product delivery (intermediate product?)

·        Do it twice (one quickly that barely works, one later with full feature)

·        Chang profit margin

Enterprise Level

Should we choose this project for another?

Should we change the enterprise-level policy or strategy to improve all projects? For example,

    - use more technology for meeting and communication?

    - have an overall contract for outsourcing?