The Agile Triangle (Was: The Iron Triangle)
“Management wants us to be agile and adaptive, but we also must conform to the project’s planned scope, schedule, and cost.”
The Iron Triangle (scope, time and cost) has been a staple of project management for decades. The idea is simple: we can’t change one part of a project, like adding more features, without affecting either the budget or the timeline.
But agile software development thrives on change. It’s all about learning as we go, collaborating closely with customers, and focusing on delivering working software that actually solves problems. So when organisations try to apply the same fixed scope, fixed time and fixed cost approach to agile work, things often start to unravel. Teams are expected to stay flexible and deliver value but are also held to rigid project constraints, and that’s a tough, often unrealistic ask.