Project Management: Theory of Golden Triangle and Leadership

This essay delves into the core principles of project management, examining two key areas: the golden triangle and the role of leadership. The golden triangle, encompassing cost, schedule, and scope, is analyzed as a framework for understanding project constraints and trade-offs. The essay explores how changes in one constraint inevitably impact the others, emphasizing the importance of effective management to achieve desired outcomes. The second part focuses on the significance of leadership in project management, highlighting essential leadership qualities such as motivation, integrity, communication, and confidence. The essay emphasizes how these traits enable project managers to guide teams, foster collaboration, and navigate challenges to ensure project success. The author draws upon personal experiences to illustrate the practical application of these concepts.

Project Management
1

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................................3
ESSAY TOPIC 1...................................................................................................................................3
a. The theory of golden triangle ......................................................................................................3
b. The role of leadership in project management.............................................................................5
CONCLUSION....................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES.....................................................................................................................................9
2

INTRODUCTION
Project management is prove to be the most effective technique of delivering services to the
customers within time, cost and resources constraints. It is focus of planning and organizing a
project and related resources (Monnappa, 2012). Along with this, it is also including determining
and managing life-cycle of a plan, adopt customer centric design approach, building of project team
and guide them until the completion of the project. With the help of project management, the
companies can ensure that the vision and goals of the plan are well maintained and help in
achieving the major deliverables of the work (Matur, 2016). Additionally, it assists in avoid the risks
from the action plan and optimum utilize the resources. The present essay is relating to project
management and under this, the various objectives will be cover which are theory of golden triangle
and role of leadership in project management.
ESSAY TOPIC 1
a. The theory of golden triangle
In project management, the golden triangle is also called project management triangle, triple
constraint or the iron triangle. In this, the three attributes shows on the corners of the triangle which
are cost, schedule and scope. During the study of this model, I have learned that it is use to analyse
the goals of a project and define that project management success can be measure by ability of
project team to manage the work (Project Management Triangle, 2016). On the basis of this, the
expected outcome can be get by managing cost and time. While working on the different projects, I
have experienced that projects should be execute and deliver under certain limitations such as time,
cost and scope.
Time constraint define the available time to complete the work and cost constraint means
available budget for the project. The scope constraint means what activities needed to be done to
achieve the outcome of the work (The Project Triangle, 2016). So, from these, I have learned that
there three limitations are depending on each other. The changes in one of them can affect the other
two. For example increase scope means increase cost and time. The fixed time constraint means
increased cost and reduced scope. Therefore, with the use of project management triangle, the
managers can understand and analyse the difficulties that may be arise at any stage of the project
either in project execution or implementation (Project Management Triangle, 2016). From the
studies of the various articles on golden triangle, I have analysed that it shows the relationship
between the three primary forces in a project.
The three constraints
3

Time
As per the my perception, for analytical purpose, the time is require to deliver the outcomes
that have already been estimated with the help of several techniques. For example, Work
Breakdown structure helps in divide the large task into the small activities and set into the groups.
For this, the time frame for each sub task can be easily allocated and on the basis of this, the overall
completion time of the work can be estimated (Ogunlana, 2010). On the other hand, I have learned
that with the help of time constraint, it becomes easy to prioritize the activities according to the
available time span. Along with this, the dependencies between the tasks can be easily define and
this information helps the scheduling of the project plan and its proper documentation. Although the
dependencies between the activities may put the impact on length of entire action plan and
availability and use of the resources to complete the project (Ebbesen and Hope, 2013). For this, the
time of each activity can be vary according to it.
After the study of Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) concept, I have
learned that time constraint is needed to manage because it may affect the project completion time.
So, with the help of Project Time Management Process, the duration of project plan activities can be
estimate and finish the work within the given time slot (Adak and Yumuşak, 2013). In the other
words, the time is a vert crucial factor that is completely uncontrollable. So, if the project manager
is unable or failure to achieve the deadline of the project than it can create adverse effect on the
entire work. Therefore, from the above discussion, I have leaned that a project can either take
longer or shorter time to complete and it has affected by the various factors such as a number of
people involve in the work, experience, competencies, skills etc (Azimi and et.al., 2011). Most of
the time, time has the major constraint of failure of the projects.
Cost
To complete any kind of work, an appropriate budget is require because without it, it is not
possible to buy the resources for meet the deliverables. In the previous time, I have worked on
different construction projects. On the basis of this, I have learned that the project cost is depending
on the several variables like wages rate of labours, budget to buy the resources etc (Burke, 2013). At
the time of estimating the cost of the various things, fixed and variable costs, economic cost which
cover productivity and skills of the workers has to be consider and make the calculation on the basis
of this.
As per my experience, there are three cost process areas: cost estimating, cost budgeting and
cost control. Cost estimation means approximation of cost of different resources which are require
to complete the work (Colin and Vanhoucke, 2014). On the other hand, cost budgeting can be define
as estimation of costs of various resources, packages of work and activities to set a cost baseline.
4

Beside this, cost control area is used to determine those factors which create variance and
fluctuation in the cost. Along with this, it can be easy to keep the control over them with the help of
different cost management tools. Hence, from cost constraint, I have learned that for both
organization and management should estimate cost before starting of the project. It will ensure them
that the work will execute and complete within the given cost limitations (Flyvbjerg, 2013).
Scope
It is very well known that specified requirements helps in achieving the outcomes as per the
expectations. From my perception, scope can be define as a complete set of features, characteristic
or the deliverables of a project (Gemünden, Huemann and Martinsuo, 2013). These explore from
project requirements and needs. It is the decision regarding what work will be completed at the life-
cycle of a plan. With the help of proper defining the scope of a project, it becomes easy to
determine those activities that is essential to complete successfully. By working in an organization
as a project manager, I have analysed that there are many issues responsible for scope creep such as
ambiguity and incomplete scope, misinterpretations at the time of designing of plan etc. These all
have affected the scope of the work in negative manner and leads the project at failure stage
(Gyawali, Tao and Müller, 2013). Therefore, from the above state statements, I have learned that
scope has defined the expected outcomes of the proposed project which contain a list of the various
deliverables.
Therefore, from the overall discussion, I have gain deep knowledge about golden triangle of
project management. Along with this, I have also learned that three constraints, scope, budget and
time have depended on each other and variation in one has brought the impact on two elements
(Hazır, 2015). These three have affected the quality of projects and their deliverables. Beside this, I
have also explored that with the help of time, cost and scope, the appropriate quality of the work
can be achieve and measured the effectiveness of the outcomes.
b. The role of leadership in project management
Leadership is an important part of every organization because it assist the managers to lead
the team of workforce in the right direction in order to achieve the objectives and aim of the
business (Akers, 2013). In the project management, leadership is an essential element that help the
project manager to guide the team members effectively. As per my experience, I think that project
managers should have proper and appropriate leadership qualities in order to perform the roles. It
makes them unique and different to the order ordinary people from the crowd. Although, the project
managers comes from the technical background and they have to lead very complex problems
(Barrick and et.al., 2013). In this situation, the leadership skills become more important for them to
5

guide the project team.
At the post of project manager, I have learned from my past experience that project leader
should be having the good leadership skills such as confidence, creative, good problem solver,
honest, good motivator, optimism, having positive attitude, team building, able to work in the team
etc. These all traits help the project manage to lead the team and work in more better way. The first
leadership skills in this context is motivate and inspire others (AlMazrouei and Zacca, 2015). From
this, I have gain the knowledge that the project manager should create a good vision for the work.
For achieving this, he should inspire the other team members and motivate them in the right
direction. Without coordination between the members, it is not easy to meet the goals. Along with
this, he should use different methods of motivating the staff so that they can able to give their
efforts to achieve the objectives. So, it can be said that, a project leader should always help the team
members so that they both connect with each other all the time (Avolio and Mhatre, 2012).
On the other hand, I have also learned that the project leader should show high level of
integrity and honesty during the work. For the project manager in the project management, they
should always be honest and transparent so that hey can able to share his ideas with the team
members (Collinson and Cook, 2013). It will assist in developing a strong trust between the leader
and followers and due to this, it will be easy to direct them in the right direction with the aim of
achieve the objectives. Only because of this, the people will ready to work with the project leader
on every new projects. For example, recently I have leaded a new project where I am currently
working. During this phase, I have analysed that by maintaining the transparency and honesty, I
have managed the work in effective manner. Along with this, my team members have supported me
in the difficult situations (Daft, 2014). So, I have admire that honesty and transparency is a sign of
good project leader in a project management.
Beside this, a good project leader should have the skill of good communication because
without clear communication, the team members will not understand the mission, vision and goals.
Generally, the employees wants to work with those leaders who are capable to guide them (Daicoff,
2012). So, it is important for the project leaders to understand that communication is an important
thing for them. The poor communication skills will create the confusion in the team members
because he will not able to explain and express his ideas in from the staff. Due to this, he will fail to
lead the team and achieve the goals. Therefore, from this, I have learned that with great and good
communication, project leader will deliver the right information to the team members and because
of this, the employees will know exactly what they are working and how to achieve the aim of the
work (Frick and et.al., 2014).
On the other side, the project leader should be confidence because when the things goes
6

wrong during the implementation of the plan, the employees looks towards him for the answers
with the intention of solutions (Fullan, 2011). For example, at the workplace, if project leader face
breakdown in the machines and which may be create a delay in the entire project than he should be
confident and calm to solve the issues. It will set a good example for the others. From this, I have
gain the knowledge that a project leader should be confident at the workplace during managing the
various project because this leadership skill will help in maintain a good and happy work
environment and help the team in their work (Hakanen and van Dierendonck, 2013).
When a project begin, the project leaders have faced various situations which may bring the
impact on the work. In such kind of situation, they should show positivity (Iqbal, 2013). From the
following leadership skill, I have learned that it helps the project leader to increase the productivity,
happiness of team members and maintain good working environment. When the serious situation
comes in the project, he should always look for the solutions or alternative by having the positivity.
This type of attitude directly affects the behaviour of the team members and make the work more
better. Therefore, from this, I have analysed that positivity is a good sign of a project leader in the
project management because it will develop and maintain a good environment at the workplace and
easy top find the solutions of the problems (Kaur, 2015).
In a complicated projects, it is hard for the project leader to trust over the employees very
quickly. But, for a good leader, he should trust on the team members and explain them about the
expectations. By analysing the strengths of each of them can assist the project leader to decide the
delegation. After this,, it will become easy to assign the roles and responsibilities to workers and it
will leads to develop a good skilled and effective team (Krogh, Nonaka and Rechsteiner, 2012). On
the basis of the above stated information, I have explored that the project leader should set some
delegations so that projects can effectively manage and complete within the given constraint.
Accountable is one of the leadership skill of project leader in the project management area.
It means, he should accept the responsibilities and meet the expectations which have expected by
the client or company from him (Lee, and Lawrence, 2013). Along with this, he should not blame
on the other staff members for own mistakes or the things have out of control. From this, I have
gained the knowledge that project leader should take the initiatives of taking the responsibilities and
outcomes of the work.
For a project leader, it is essential that he should be creative because at the time of handling
the various projects, he may be face the different issues that can be affect his working style (Prive,
2012). In this condition, he should show his creativity because it will help in come out from the
critical situation. For project leader, it is important to think and learn from out of the box and
develop the new methods of doing the work. With the help of this, it will become easy to resolve the
7

issues during managing the projects (Gorey, 2015). Therefore, from above stated leadership skill of
project leader, I have learned that he should also adopt creativity for managing the projects and
solve the problems because it will assist him to done the work in the more effective and right
manner.
Rather than this, the project leader should be passionate towards his work because it will
lead him complete complex projects and easily deal with various situations. This thing will motivate
the followers on the correct path and they will able to give their efforts to make the work effective
and proper. The role of this leadership skills in project management is it will deliver the expected
outcome of the work and the team members will get the good guidance from him (Downard, 2016).
With the help of this, the project leader will solve the complex issues, finish the work and achieve
the objectives.
If the project leader expected from the team members that they work hard and deliver the
good quality of work than he has to set a good example for the team members (Economy, 2016).
The level of commitment of his is a good motivation for the others when the employees seeing that
their leader is also working on the project with every one. The role of this leadership skills in the
project management is he will earn the respect from his staff and motivating others. The highly
commitment level of the project leader will influence worker to work hard for achieve the
objectives of the project. From this discussion, I have learned that a good project leader in a project
management should always stick on his words. This will create a reputation for him in the team not
of just hard working but also be a fair leader (Abudi, 2010). Once this thing happen than it will be
easy to deliver the quality and deliverables of project in the peak workload time.
From the above stated different leadership styles in the project management, I have learned
that to become a successful project leader in a life, the different leadership qualities are essential. It
has differentiate them from the normal people. Along with this, I have also gained the knowledge
about how good leadership skills helps in managing the projects, various issues and get the success
in the work with the time.
CONCLUSION
From the above essay, it can be concluded that project management has an important part of
of managing the different phases of the project. In this context, the golden triangle has helped in
analysed the goals of the project and determine the ways to measured the success by considering the
ability of the team members. On the other hand, with the help of various leadership skills such as
commitment, confidence, motivation, transparency, good communication etc has helped the project
leader to achieved the objectives and delivered the set outcomes in the project management.
8

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Adak, M. F. and Yumuşak, N., 2013. Hpcs: A Web Based Homework & Project Control
System. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences. 106. pp. 1378-1383.
Akers, R.L., 2013. Criminological theories: Introduction and evaluation. Routledge.
AlMazrouei, H. and Zacca, R., 2015. Expatriate leadership competencies and performance: a
qualitative study. International Journal of Organizational Analysis. 23(3). pp.404-424.
Avolio, B.J. and Mhatre, K.H., 2012. Advances in theory and research on authentic leadership. The
Oxford handbook of positive organizational scholarship. pp.773-783.
Azimi, R. and et.al., 2011. A framework for an automated and integrated project monitoring and
control system for steel fabrication projects. Automation in Construction. 20(1). pp. 88-97.
Barrick, M.R. and et.al., 2013. The theory of purposeful work behavior: The role of personality,
higher-order goals, and job characteristics. Academy of Management Review. 38(1). pp.132-
153.
Burke, R., 2013. Project management: planning and control techniques. SAGE.
Chiu-Chi, W. and et.al, 2013. Assignment of project members considering capability and personality
balance. Kybernetes. 42(7).Pp.1016 - 1028.
Colin, J. and Vanhoucke, M., 2014. Setting tolerance limits for statistical project control using
earned value management. Omega. 49. pp. 107-122.
Collinson, V. and Cook, T.F., 2013. Organizational Learning: Leading Innovations. International
Journal of Educational Leadership and Management. 1(1). pp.69-98.
Daft, R., 2014. The leadership experience. Cengage Learning.
Daicoff, S.S., 2012. Expanding the Lawyer's Toolkit of Skills and Competencies: Synthesizing
Leadership, Professionalism, Emotional Intelligence, Conflict Resolution, and
Comprehensive Law. Santa Clara L. Rev. 52. p.795.
Darren, D., 2012. The nature of project management: A reflection on The Anatomy of Major
Projects by Morris and Hough. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business.
5(4). Pp. 643 - 660.
Dey, K. P., Clegg, T., and Bennett, J. D., 2010. Managing enterprise resource planning projects.
Business Process Management Journal. 16(2). pp.282 – 296.
Ebbesen, J.B. and Hope, A., 2013. Re-imagining the iron triangle: embedding sustainability into
project constraints. PM World Journal, 2(III).
Flyvbjerg, B., 2013. Quality control and due diligence in project management: Getting decisions
9

right by taking the outside view. International Journal of Project Management. 31(5). pp.
760-774.
Frick, P.J. and et.al., 2014. Annual Research Review: A developmental psychopathology approach
to understanding callous‐unemotional traits in children and adolescents with serious conduct
problems. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 55(6). pp.532-548.
Fullan, M., 2011. The six secrets of change: What the best leaders do to help their organizations
survive and thrive. John Wiley & Sons.
Gemünden, H. G., Huemann, M. and Martinsuo, M., 2013. Project management: A social
innovation that is changing our world of thinking and acting. International Journal of
Project Management. 6(31). pp. 791-793.
Gyawali, P., Tao, Y. and Müller, R., 2013. Project control mechanisms in non-project-based
organisations in Asia. International Journal of Project Organisation and Management. 5(4).
pp. 312-333.
Hakanen, J. and van Dierendonck, D., 2013. Servant-Leadership and Life Satisfaction: The
Mediating Role of Justice, Job Control, and Burnout.International Journal of Servant-
Leadership. 7(1). pp.253-261.
Hazır, Ö., 2015. A review of analytical models, approaches and decision support tools in project
monitoring and control. International Journal of Project Management. 33(4). pp. 808-815.
Iqbal, T., 2013. The Impact of Leadership Styles on Organizational Effectiveness. GRIN Verlag.
Kathy, O. R. and Deborah, R. P., 2007. Integrating self‐managed work teams into project
management. Journal of Facilities Management. 5(1). Pp.22 - 36.
Kaur, J., 2015. ENHANCING LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES: THROUGH MENTORING
PROCESS. International Journal of Management Research and Reviews. 5(4). p.265.
Krogh, V. G., Nonaka, I., and Rechsteiner, L. 2012. Leadership in organizational knowledge
creation: a review and framework. Journal of Management Studies. 49(1). pp. 240-277.
Lee, R. and Lawrence, P., 2013. Organizational Behaviour. Politics at Work. 18th ed. Routledge.
Ogunlana, S.O., 2010. Beyond the ‘iron triangle’: Stakeholder perception of key performance
indicators (KPIs) for large-scale public sector development projects. International Journal
of Project Management, 28(3), pp.228-236.
Online
Abudi, G., 2010. PROJECT MANAGERS NEED LEADERSHIP SKILLS. [Online]. Available
through: <https://www.projectsmart.co.uk/project-managers-need-leadership-skills.php>.
[Accessed on: 28th April, 2016].
Downard, B., 2016. 101 Leadership Skills & Traits – The Complete List. [Online]. Available
10

through: <http://eliv8group.com/leadership-skills-list/>. [Accessed on: 28th April, 2016].
Economy, P., 2016. Top 10 skills every great needs to succeed . [Online]. Available through:
<http://www.inc.com/peter-economy/top-10-skills-every-great-leader-needs-to-
succeed.html>. [Accessed on: 28th April, 2016].
Gorey, A., 2015. Top 10 Qualities of Great Leadership - Do You Have What it Takes?. [Online].
Available through: <http://info.profilesinternational.com/profiles-employee-assessment-
blog/bid/204911/Top-10-Qualities-of-Great-Leadership-Do-You-Have-What-it-Takes>.
[Accessed on: 28th April, 2016].
Matur, A., 2016. Improve project success with better scope management. [Online]. Available
through: <https://www.projectsmart.co.uk/improve-project-success-with-better-scope-
management.php>. [Accessed on: 28th April, 2016].
Monnappa, A., 2012. Project Scope Management and Its Importance. [Online]. Available through:
<http://www.simplilearn.com/project-scope-management-importance-rar89-article>.
[Accessed on: 28th April, 2016].
Prive, T., 2012. Top 10 Qualities That Make A Great Leader. [Online]. Available through:
<http://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyaprive/2012/12/19/top-10-qualities-that-make-a-great-
leader/#21dee5c73564>. [Accessed on: 28th April, 2016].
Project Management Triangle. 2016. [Online]. Available through:
<http://www.stakeholdermap.com/project-management/project-triangle.html>. [Accessed
on: 28th April, 2016].
Project Management Triangle. 2016. [Online]. Available through:
<http://www.tutorialspoint.com/management_concepts/project_management_triangle.htm>.
[Accessed on: 28th April, 2016].
The Project Triangle. 2016. [Online]. Available through:
<http://www.sqa.org.uk/e-learning/ProjMan03CD/page_13.htm>. [Accessed on: 28th April,
2016].
11

12