Assuming you suspect or know that one of your projects is in trouble the first step is always an extensive project review. After such a review you hopefully have the necessary information for decision-making as well as the team’s support for the recovery of the project.
It may be highly unlikely that the original requirements can still be met without some serious tradeoffs. You must now work with the team and determine the tradeoff options that you will present to the stakeholders.
When the project first began, the triple constraints most likely looked like what you see in the figure below.
Time, cost and scope were the primary constraints and tradeoffs would have been made on the secondary constraints of quality, risk, value and image/reputation.
When a project becomes distressed, stakeholders know that the original budget and schedule may no longer be valid. The project may take longer and may cost significantly more money than originally thought.
As such, the primary concerns for the stakeholders as to whether or not to support the project further may change to value, quality and image/reputation as shown in the figure below.
This happens almost every time I work on a troubled project recovery. After focussing on these the project actually runs a lot smoother and high-value outcomes are prioritized and supported.
So the big question is why don’t we start projects with the reversed constraint triangle? Why put our image and reputation on the line by letting it come that far? Why work on things that obviously do not have such a high value because when it comes hard on hard they are not needed? Why make the quality first a priority when we already feel the pain of bad quality?