 Welcome to this short video explaining the Project Management Triangle, also known as the Project Management Triple Constraint, and how we can create a project priority matrix. The Project Management Triangle consists of three critical aspects of all projects. First is time, that is, the time that it takes to successfully complete our project. The second is the cost, the cost that is required in order to successfully complete our project. And the third aspect is scope. Now scope is sometimes also referred to as performance specifications or quality, and I suppose that those might be better terms for some projects, but the performance specifications and quality standards are really all part of a project's scope. Now these three aspects of our project are interrelated and linked to each other. And we refer to this as a triangle because we can't change one of these project aspects without affecting the others. So if we decrease the time to completion, we may have to make adjustments to the cost or scope of our project. Likewise, if we increase the scope of our project, we will be affecting either the cost or the time to completion or perhaps both. So when we are considering these aspects of our project, especially in planning for a project, it's important to consider what trade-offs we are willing to make as the project proceeds. This way the project manager and the project stakeholders have a clear understanding of project priorities. We can make this understanding very clear using a tool called a project priority matrix. In this matrix, we consider these three elements of the project in three ways that we can balance these elements against each other. First we can either accept changes to one of these three aspects. We can constrain an aspect, meaning that it is a priority that this aspect not change, or we can choose to enhance a particular aspect if possible, that is to make it better. Let's consider an example of a project in which the stakeholders are willing to accept a change in time, meaning a longer time to completion, but are not willing to accept changes in cost that cost is constrained, and would like to enhance the scope if possible. In this case, the scope might be enhanced as long as it only leads to a longer time to completion, but not if it means an increase in cost. Once again to think about that word enhance, think about it as better. So when we say we want to enhance the scope, in this case we're going to add more features, have better specifications, we're going to make this a better project in some aspect. Let's consider another example. In this example we're going to constrain time, we're going to accept changes in cost, and we are also going to accept changes in scope. So this is not atypical of what you might find with something like a software development project, where we have a specific deadline that we have to meet, maybe we're releasing this piece of software at a trade show or some other event that has other impact on how well this product is going to sell, so it's vitally important that we constrain that time. So we are willing to accept changes to the cost or to the scope of our project. Let's look at another example, in this case we are willing to accept changes in time, we are going to enhance cost, and we are going to constrain the scope of our project. Once again let's think about that word enhance. So often we think of enhance as making something bigger, we generally think that that is not a good thing for our projects to have an increased cost, so just once again think about that as better. So in this case we want lower costs. So in this example we are going to constrain the scope of our project, we'd like to reduce the cost if possible, and we are certainly willing to accept some delays in our project completion date if it will in fact decrease the cost of the project. So look at one other example here where we're going to enhance time, we're going to constrain costs, and we're going to accept changes in the scope. Once again we are using this word enhance to make something better. So in this case with time we consider that a project is an enhanced time if the project is done in less time. So in this particular example we are constrain the cost, we are willing to accept changes in the scope if it means that we can actually get the project done a little bit earlier. Obviously we are going to be communicating these types of trade offs as we go throughout the project with our stakeholders, but this is a very useful tool that we can use to have an idea upfront of the type of trade offs that we are going to be willing to make as the project proceeds. So hopefully that provides you with a good introduction into the project management triangle also known as the triple constraint and how to create a project priority matrix.