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how to you response to the sponsor if he tells you that schedule, scope and cost are not flexible and cannot be changed?

TomW's picture
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Are we talking about someone internal or external? You don't give us much to go on.

Personally, I'd call that "normal." It's a manager's job to deal with seemingly impossible constraints.

BJ_Marshall's picture
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If the sponsor wants something completely inflexible, you can always strive to deliver that. But it is highly unlikely that nothing will change in a project's life, so rigid inflexibility might be unrealistic. Proactive communication with that sponsor will be key to get them to see how changes will likely occur.

The sponsor could play a big part on change management, ranging from helping to develop a change control plan to sitting on the change control board. Ideally (at least from the sponsor's view) the change control would be "There will be no changes. Period." Otherwise, if there are changes, you'll have to consider the impact of those changes on time and cost.

BJ

pm15127's picture

[quote="TomW"]Are we talking about someone internal or external? You don't give us much to go on.

Personally, I'd call that "normal." It's a manager's job to deal with seemingly impossible constraints.[/quote]

internal sponsor. how do you recommend to due with such sponsor?

HMac's picture

[quote="pm15127"]how to you response to the sponsor if he tells you that schedule, scope and cost are not flexible and cannot be changed?[/quote]

I think your primary job is to provide a candid and clear picture of the outcome given schedule, scope and cost. Stick to the facts. Let's assume the outcome is not satisfactory to the sponsor. You each have variables you have some influence over:

[list]* You [i]might [/i]be able to pull more resources, change work methods to speed things up, or re-prioritize assignments.

* The sponsor [i]might [/i]be able to increase resources, change the scope or delay some of the outputs.[/list:u]

In any event, don't approach this as a disagreement - because you'll be putting yourself on the defensive. The professional part of project management is being able to relate inputs to outcomes, and to continually make the case that if you want different otucomes, you have to look at how you're going to change the inputs.

-Hugh

Nik's picture

Have you already spec'd the project and set a schedule and budget? If not, spend some time with the project sponsor and work through areas where there might be creep, and pad your estimates in those areas to account for changes. That way there's a reliable outcome, but there's also wiggle-room.

I've also had some luck requesting a longer than usual discovery period during which I push to REALLY nail down specs to a very fine level. (Including basic programming architecture, etc.) This dramatically reduces uncertainty, and also creates a very authoritative body of research to manage the project from.

If you're reliant on staff outside of your control, you'll need the sponsor to lean heavily on their managers to make sure that they will be devoted sufficiently to the project. Again, pad their estimates on availability according to your usual experiences with them.

And lastly, reduce scope from the outset. If the sponsor wants a reliable outcome, scope will have to be as slim as possible in order to guarantee success. If there are unknowns with scope (They sound like "Build a data abstraction layer on our proprietary systems that guy down the street wrote for us"), do your best to eliminate them or double your estimates on 'em.

The goal here is to handle your re-negotiations of constraints up front. There's no reason you shouldn't be able to deliver on time and budget, but you'll have to account for any ambiguity or unknowns in the process.

And if you've already spec'd things out and gotten started, well, good luck to you! Time to pull strings and call in favors to get people to work overtime to get it done.