Tradeoffs on projects

Prior to the mail survey of 500 PMI members discussed in this article, many researches accepted the conventional notion that the degree of importance--or weights--of project performance, cost, and schedule changed systematically during the project life cycle. To understand this notion, the authors focused their survey questions on the other influences affecting the project life cycle, influences such as environmental and situational factors, project manager education and experience, organizational industry, and project sponsorship. This article details the results of this survey. In doing so, it explains the reporting methodology used and describes the survey findings, results that were divided into two groups: one that focused on performance, cost, and time weights; one that focused on environmental and situational factors. It then discusses the weights in relation to the project life cycle (initiation, planning, execution, close-out) and in relation to environment factors (industry categories, departmental categories, for-profit or not-for-profit categories, project manager background and experience, performance). It subsequently analyzes the survey findings. It concludes by discussing--based on the survey results--the relationship between weights and project goals.