Literature Review

Every project is associated with various risks, among which some are avoidable, and some are not. Risk professionals, leaders, and project manager aim to manage the exposure of the risks of obtaining an acceptable risk impact, level and standard quality of task. Pinto and Patanakul, (2017) have provided example stating that the project manager trade-off certain risks within the project for gaining more benefits from the project itself. There exist various tools and techniques that are used in managing the schedule and cost of the project. Lin et al., (2016) illustrated that all the projects are conducted based on several constraints that are kept constant within the project for obtaining the required standard of the project. According to Dwivedula, Bredillet, and Müller, (2015), the traditional process of project management and approach, there was three major constraints namely cost, schedule and scope of the project. Within with the advancement of technology and the increasing demand for standard performance, another significant constrained has been introduced – Quality.

Quadruple Constraint

Anderson et al., (2015) illustrated that the Quadruple Constraint model in project management is utilized by the project manager for analyzing the difficulties and risk associated and may occur during the development of the project. The factors identified in the Quadruple Constraint are irrespective of the project size and type.

The four major constraints as identified in the Quadruple Constraint are:

Time: The time in the Quadruple Constraint is referred to the actual time required for completing the project. Capa, and Ulusoy, (2014) cited that the time taken for completing the project is directly dependent on the deliverables and clients’ requirement for the particular project. Capa, and Ulusoy, (2015) showed that time is one of the crucial factors in project management that cannot be controlled. The inability of complete the project within the allocated deadline often results in the failure of the project.

Cost: Diskin, Maibaum, and Czarnecki, (2015) have defined cost as the estimated budget required to complete a project within the defined deadline and available resources. All the deliverable of the project incorporates various cost including cost of materials, risk estimates, contractor rates and resources required for the project. According to Turner, Anbari, and Bredillet, (2013), cost needs to be increased in the case of completing the project within the scheduled deadline and increased scope.

Scope: The scope of the project is defined as the functional elements that needs to be completed for completing the project. Marnewick, (2014) showed that the successful identification of the in-scope and out scope of the project helps in successfully evaluating the impact of the scope upon the cost and time required.

Quality: According to Chang, (2015), the quality of the project is considered as the vital objectives required for the successful delivery of the project. Dwivedula, Bredillet, and Müller, (2015) have defined quality as the entity quality that needed to be achieved for obtaining the implied needs and satisfaction of the clients. On the other hand, the quality of the project is defined and measured by various attributes including the maintenance requirement, system breakdown, and errors.  

Quadruple Constraint

Understanding the Quadruple Constraint

The Quadruple Constraint have provided the stakeholders with the inter-relation between the four constraints within the project for developing and completing the project within the pre-define standard. According to Pinto and Patanakul, (2017), the reluctance of the project manager in changing a particular attribute with the respective change in any one attribute of the Quadruple Constraint may often result in the failure of the entire project.  

Conveying the Quadruple Constraint

Lin et al., (2016) argued that the Quadruple Constraint alone is not efficient for ensuring the required standard of the project. Anderson et al., (2015) claimed that the project manager is responsible for conveying the data obtained from the Quadruple Constraint model to the stakeholders for enhancing the impact of cost, scope, budget and quality of the project. Often the lack of awareness of the stakeholders in regard of the changing the constraints of the Quadruple Constraint results in budget adjustment and scope creep of the project. Therefore, for ensuring the significant impact of the Quadruple Constraint in the project for meeting the client’s expectation, the project manager needs to convey the information of the Quadruple Constraint to all the stakeholders effectively without delay.

Monitoring the Quadruple Constraint

According to Capa, and Ulusoy, (2014), the project manager has the key responsibility of ensuring the different attributes of the Quadruple Constraint helps in increasing the success likelihood of the project much higher. The application of the Quadruple Constraint model allows the project manager in being cognizant of any changes in any attributes of the projected whether requested or unexpected. The use of Quadruple Constraint shows the project manager the needs of change of particular attribute; according to the request of the client or unexpected outcome; forced the manager to modify the other attributes.

The addition of the new constraint in the project has modified the triple constraint model to quadruple constraints model with a diamond shape.

Figure 1: Quadruple Constraint Model in Project Management

(Source: Anderson et al., 2015, p.48)

Marnewick, (2014) illustrated that the application of the traditional triple constraint in project management, that is focusing on schedule, costs and scope allow in developing a project within the requested schedule, budget while meeting the requirement of the client. But the triple constraint fails to focus on the quality of the project like the performance of the system, presence of bugs in the system, errors in the projects. Diskin, Maibaum, and Czarnecki, (2015) argued that the expectation of the customers from the project is different based on the project, specifications, and requirements. The development of the Quadruple Constraint has made the expectation of the customer as the principle theme of the project. According to Marnewick, (2014), the modifications are done in any one of the cost, schedule and scope of the project impacts the quality to an extreme level. Furthermore, the change in the any of the one dimension of the Quadruple Constraint changes minimum one constraint in the model. Turner, Anbari, and Bredillet, (2013) provided an example that the increment of the scope within the project simultaneously increases the cost and time required. Similarly, increasing the budget of the project, while keeping the scope intact, reduces the time taken for completing the project. On the other hand, Dwivedula, Bredillet, and Müller, (2015) agreed on this by citing that decreasing the quality of the project while keeping the scope constant, reduces the time and budget required.  

In the case of various risks faced during the project, the project manager has to sacrifice with some aspect of the Quadruple Constraint for keeping one aspect of the project constant according to predefined criteria.  

Conclusion

The project manager comprises and trade-off with different elements of the Quadruple Constraint for reducing the impact of significant risk within the project. The scope reduction in the project is not easy, and the modification of the scope often results in the delivering minimum viable projects to the clients. On the other hand the schedule and cost the project can be modified with effective negotiation with the client and other stakeholders. Moreover, the modification of the quality of the project often results in the satisfaction of the client. The Quadruple Constraint mechanism is one of the significant tool used in the project management for the identifying the connection between the different elements within the project. Furthermore, the Quadruple Constraint is one of the significant assets to the project manager for effective and efficient management and monitoring of the project while eliminating the risks.

References 

Anderson, D. R., Sweeney, D. J., Williams, T. A., Camm, J. D., & Cochran, J. J. (2015). An introduction to management science: quantitative approaches to decision making. Cengage learning.

Capa, C., & Ulusoy, G. (2014). Proactive project scheduling with a bi-objective genetic algorithm in an R&D department.

Capa, C., & Ulusoy, G. (2015, March). Proactive project scheduling in an R&D department a bi-objective genetic algorithm. In Industrial Engineering and Operations Management (IEOM), 2015 International Conference on (pp. 1-6). IEEE.

Chang, C. Y. (2015). Harnessing BIM data in the management of project risks: the Bayesian risk-bearing capacity approach.

Diskin, Z., Maibaum, T., & Czarnecki, K. (2015, July). A model management imperative: being graphical is not sufficient, you have to be categorical. In European Conference on Modelling Foundations and Applications (pp. 154-170). Springer International Publishing.

Dwivedula, R., Bredillet, C. N., & Müller, R. (2015). The relation between work motivation and project management success in case of temporary organizations: theoretical lenses.

Lin, Y., Xu, X., Yu, B., Baldick, R., & Pan, D. Z. (2016, March). Triple/quadruple patterning layout decomposition via novel linear programming and iterative rounding. In SPIE Advanced Lithography (pp. 97810M-97810M). International Society for Optics and Photonics.

Marnewick, C. (2014). The business case: the missing link between information technology benefits and organisational strategies: original research. Acta Commercii, 14(1), 1-11.

Pinto, J. K., & Patanakul, P. (2017). Managing Projects. The Oxford Handbook of Management, 219.

Turner, J. R., Anbari, F., & Bredillet, C. (2013). Perspectives on research in project management: the nine schools. Global Business Perspectives, 1(1), 3-28.