You Can’t Control Everything

I have spent many years wondering why some projects at work were more frustrating than others. It wasn’t until a friend of ours told me about the Cost-Quality Triangle that this frustration was something that I understood.  You can’t control everything.

When you look at how you can influence the outcomes of a project you need to understand that you can only control two of the three items, Cost, Quality or Time.  Effectively you can work on just one of the sides of the triangle.  Let me explain.

• If you want to control the Cost of the project and the Quality of the output then Time is the item that will be uncontrollable.
• If you want to control the Time that a project takes and the Quality of the output then the Cost is the item that will be uncontrollable.
• If you want to control the Cost of the project and the Time taken to complete then the Quality of the output is uncontrollable.

With this knowledge, I realised that my frustration is the result of trying to control all three factors.  That it is far too difficult, you can’t control everything.  Sometimes we get lucky and the uncontrollable factor falls within the budget.

So what can we do about this?  Awareness was the big leap forward for me and now I make sure that the people in my team and the people we are reporting to are also aware and understand. Prioritise which items to focus on, “If one of these factors was to fail which will be the least important at the end of the day”.

Manage expectations and over deliver.

Have you had a similar experience? I would love to hear about it.  Leave a comment below.