Are the three key elements of a project time, cost, and quality?

The three main controls of a project are: quality, schedule, and cost. These must be the three elements.

It should be quality, progress, and efficiency

It should be progress, quality, and investment, that is, the “three key controls”.

During project implementation, schedule, cost, and quality are the three key elements

Quality, schedule, and cost are the three main control objectives in project management; they are interrelated, influence one another, and constrain each other. Ensuring the balance and rationality of these three elements is the fundamental goal pursued in project management.

According to the chapter on what is project management in PMBOK 2004 published by PMI (Project Management Institute), aside from PMI’s authoritative definition of project management, what remains is the triangular relationship, which illustrates the importance of this relationship in project management. The project management triangle refers to the interdependent relationships among project scope, project time, and project cost; the quality of a project is determined by the balance among these three factors. Visually speaking, the project scope, time, and cost are the three sides of a triangle, while the project quality is the area of that triangle. This diagram is easy to understand; anyone can grasp most of its meaning without any explanation: to obtain a project product of the desired quality, it is necessary to determine the project’s scope, timeline, and cost. If any one of these three elements changes, it will inevitably cause at least one of the other two to change as well. It’s a simple question, but in actual work, among all the tasks we have to handle on a daily basis, how many of our bosses who are responsible for making critical decisions can really keep this triangle rule in mind? Project quality is not determined by the project manager or even the project organization; various regulations and standards serve as benchmarks, and the project’s output must meet the specified requirements. And customers' ignorance of projects and products leads them to constantly try to expand the scope of the projects, believing that at least this way they won’t be paying the project team for nothing. In order to gain more benefits, the project team is under constant pressure from the boss to strive to shorten the timeline and reduce costs. All those with power and financial influence in the project are trying to undermine this iron triangle. As a whole, for a project to enable the coordination of resources across all aspects, it is essential to be well familiar with the concept of the project triangle. In the project triangle, the scope must take into account not only the requirements for the direct outcomes of the project but also the related work requirements in areas such as human resource management, quality management, communication management, and risk management. The cost in the project triangle primarily comes from the cost of the required resources, which naturally includes the cost of human resources. These resources are acquired in various ways, and each method entails different costs. The demand for resources is directly related to the scope of work and the amount of time required to complete it. 　　The project triangle emphasizes the close interrelationship among these three aspects. To shorten the project timeline, it is necessary to increase the project costs (resources) or reduce the project scope ； To save project costs (resources), the project scope can be reduced or the project timeline extended ； If changes in requirements lead to an expansion of the project scope, it is necessary to increase the project costs (resources) or extend the project timeline. Therefore, the process of formulating a project plan is one of repeated iterations, with the plan being continuously adjusted to reconcile the various requirements. During the project execution process, when a certain factor in the project changes, it often has an impact on other factors as well; it is necessary to consider the effects of such changes on those other factors. The purpose of project control is to ensure that all aspects of the project can coordinate with each other as a whole. This post was last edited by collins-2008 on 2009-2-14 11:41.]

It is progress, quality, and investment, that is, the “three controls”.

Safety is given a lot of attention these days. So it can be said that there are four key elements: control over safety, quality, schedule, and cost.

Cost, time, and quality are the three key elements