Assumptions and Constraints in Projects

In this podcast Ricardo Vargas differentiate the concept of assumption from the concept of constraint in a project, associating the risks intrinsic to the proper choice of a set of assumptions for the project.

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Hello everybody welcome to the five Minutes BM Podcast today. What? We'll talk a little bit about the Assumptions Constraints and risk. There's a lot of misunderstandings and mixup about what is an assumption, what is a constraint and what is a risk? And I'd like to try to explain a little bit and using some examples, what is an assumption? And the assumption is something that you believe will happen. You cannot prove it will happen or not, but do you strongly believe that this situation will happen?

Let's suppose you will have a project that it's a party and it will happen tomorrow. So you create an assumption tomorrow. It will not rain you or not. God. So you can't control if it will rain or not. But looking to the weather forecast, you strongly believe that this will not happen. So you can decide not to cover your party area.

So, or you can see the delights of the moon, then the stars, et cetera. This is an assumption and this is all Assumptions. They create a risk. And what does the risk in this case? The risk in this case is if tomorrow rain, all of your 1000 guests we'll be wet and this will damage your body.

This is the risk that was generated by your assumption. And this assumption is something that you can't control. So you cannot control all the aspects of one assumption because of that, that this is an assumption. In the other hand, let's say, explain what is a constraint? A constraint is something that you create, you have control, and you create the constraint only to limit the options that you have, and to protect yourself from a risk let's suppose for the body that that will do tomorrow.

Deplacement that will, will wear that the party will happen, must be covered. This is a restriction. I took the decision off, find a place, a covert place. So I can protect myself in the guests, from the rain. And this will limit the options that I have. So from among 10 different places to do my party tomorrow.

There are only three places that are covered. So I'm resisting the trick. Chin restricting the option to protect and to avoid Lloyd a risk. So let's build the back. So an assumption is something that you believe on that, but you cannot you or not sure. So you cannot prove that all Assumptions create a risk. The restriction. In the other hand, it's something that you see create to Lim, limit your options and to avoid, avoid a risk.

So the restriction is something that you have full control. The assumption is something that you believe you can have a little bit of control. So you trust that it will not rain, but if tomorrow rain then the risk one risks will become a true. So, or when we think about assumption analysis, it means how strong are our assumptions or how weak are our assumptions.

If you have a very weak, the Assumptions let's suppose you saw in the weather forecast, that it will rain tomorrow, but you prefer to say, it will not rain. This is a very wicked Assumptions because you are today. You can make a decision making a decision that will incur in a risk with a very high probability of happen. The restriction is sometimes you create a restriction to avoid the risk, to avoid a risk.

You say, Oh, I will work only at night. So you are restricting a year project for us from working during the day and why you are doing that because maybe during the day, you have a risk of more accident, work in an accident, or maybe it's very hard or something like that. And so you restrict your project in. It's very important to understand that each restriction that you create and the project will limit the options.

Otherwise I will create a project with 1 million restrictions, and then I don't need to plan because everything is so restricted that the project will not move forward. So a good project manager know how to balance Assumptions and the constraints. So you create very strong assumptions and you mix this with restrictions and with constraints that will limit your options. When you don't have enough control of that risk. I hope that this podcast can help you to understand a little bit better about risk management and see you next week with another five minutes PM.

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