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ACCA Strategic Professional · Strategic Business Leader · Leading and managing projects

Calder Retail is building a customer app. The sponsor insists on a fixed launch date and a fixed budget, but the project manager believes the full feature list cannot be delivered within both. Using the project triangle of scope, time and cost (with quality at its centre), what is the most appropriate planning response?

The best response is to negotiate a reduced or phased scope, prioritising essential features, because time and cost are fixed by the sponsor. Trading off scope protects quality, whereas cutting testing to hit the date and budget would simply hide the trade-off and increase risk.

  1. ANegotiate a reduction or phasing of scope, since time and cost are fixed, rather than silently compromising qualityCorrect
  2. BExtend the launch date, because time is always the most flexible constraint
  3. CKeep all three fixed and reduce testing effort to recover time
  4. DIncrease the budget, as cost is never a binding constraint in projects

Explanation

If time and cost are fixed, scope is the variable that must flex, for example by prioritising must-have features and phasing the rest. Cutting testing sacrifices quality, which the triangle warns against. Assuming any one constraint is always flexible ignores the sponsor's stated priorities.

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