The Critical Constraints of a Project

Projects need to be managed within certain critical constraints. Young regards these constraints, as those things that are imposed on the project, knowingly or unknowingly that you have no real control over. To identify the key constraints, some fundamental questions can be asked, such as:

• What is the available budget?
• Is there a specific cashflow requirement to be satisfied?
• Is there a critical date when the project must be completed?
• What minimum resources are required and are those available?
• What external resources are required, and can these be funded?

The key objectives of project management are to meet specified performance within cost and on schedule. We can derive from this that the most critical constraints faced by the project manager are:

These constraints can be depicted as follows:

The picture above indicates that the company resources must be managed and controlled within the constraints of time, cost and performance. Good customer relations are also necessary in order not to alienate the customer and to ensure further business from the customer.