Can You Hear Me Now?
Today is my best friend’s birthday. Being a good friend, I wanted to wish him a Happy Birthday. I went on to Facebook to post a nice Happy Birthday wish on his wall. I logged in and did a quick search to find him amongst my friend list. I searched, but to my shock, he is not on Facebook!!! I began to panic and did not know what to do. I quickly logged into AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) to wish him a happy birthday, but he was not online. Oh no! This was not going well. So, I sent him an email to his work address. I was all set, until I received the dreaded Out-of-Office bounce back. How dare he take his birthday off. Again, panic set in. He will think I am a bad friend.
How am I going to solve this?
Investing an IT infrastructure is hardly ‘fun’ for most people, unless you’re an IT professional. Warranties, bundles, security packs, subscriptions, 13 by 5 support? Stepping back from my role for a moment, it looks like a giant mess. Each vendor has a different model or structure, each subscription runs out at a different time. I picture a CFO asking, “Is this all really worth it?” Honestly, I can’t blame people for thinking that way.
Scope, Time, and Cost are the three recognized core constraints of any project (known as the “triple constraint” or “PM triangle”). Quality is often included in a discussion of the triple constraint as either a 4th constraint or as a sort of holistic attribute of the product of a project (The typical graphic is of a triangle with each corner being scope, time, and cost, and the middle being quality – food for thought: as a model, wouldn’t it be more useful for scope to be the area of the triangle, with the other constraints being the lines that define it such that if one were to be shortened, the others would have to be lengthened to accommodate the same area/scope? But I digress).
