Draft:Project Management Quadrangle

The project management quadrangle is a recent extension of the long-established project management triangle.

The principles of the project management triangle are simple and can aid project managers across many industries, including market research and insights, in ensuring they pay due consideration to these core project elements and balance them successfully for their clients' needs.

Similarly to the triangle, the Project Management Quadrangle is a simple visual representation of the core elements you need to balance in every project you manage — but it includes a previously ignored element: ESG.

And so the modern project manager should actually be looking to balance not three, but four core elements in every project they manage:

1. Time
2. Cost
3. Quality
4. ESG

Example of a balanced Project Management Quadrangle

Purpose

As with the three elements in the project management triangle, your ideal project should keep all four elements balanced in the quadrangle (keeping a traditional square shape), like in the image above.

The basic principle remains the same in that you should treat the area of the quadrangle as finite, so if you’re trying to stretch one of the core elements (e.g., budget or quality) you need to compromise elsewhere i.e., reducing the ESG focus/benefits and/or time spent on the project.

Project Management Quadrangle - project example

To not even consider this element in modern day projects is pretty ignorant and rather risky when you consider local, regional and global legislative commitments in these areas for companies and the clients they serve; but with the project management triangle still used as a key reference point it’s hardly surprising.

So, you may be wondering what ESG elements you need consider going forwards? Project managers may want to use the below list as a starting point - this is not an exhaustive list, but rather a base line of inspiration to get you into the 'quadrangle frame of mind'...

• Suppliers Try to choose more ethical suppliers over cheap ones (if you can get both, great – but it can all be balanced in the quadrangle).

• Fair pay/compensation Ensure colleagues and suppliers alike are paid well, including relevant overtime or time-off-in-lieu, and work within reasonable and law-abiding hours and conditions.

• Deeper consideration of objectives Prompt your teams and clients to think, and talk about, ESG considerations on all projects from the briefing stage, right through the delivery process. You should look to identify and call out greenwashing, whitewashing, or any other negative behavior if you see it. Make clients aware of any potential ESG impacts their project could/might have if they haven’t explicitly highlighted it. And use AI to help you at every stage.

• Ethical relevant research and associated compensation Consider the well-being and cost impacts to your participants or public during research or consultations – for example, if you’re talking in-person with people about back pain medication, the people you’re talking to will likely be sufferers, so have you ensured comfortable seating and relevant comfort breaks. Or if you ask participants to purchase a product from their local shop - make sure they're compensated for both the money and time spent to make that happen as well as for providing the relevant research inputs you've asked for too. You will need to adjust suit each project, and relevant research industry bodies such as ESOMAR and The MRS [1] have specific guidance on this to help you.

• Going far enough Consider if you’re doing enough to hear and read harder-to-reach voices like those in rural locations, carers, lower SEGs etc.

• Considered choices Think about whether any in-person interactions are needed on this project, or whether a video/voice call would be suitable. Where they are needed make considered choices about who attends and how they travel (i.e., avoiding cars, taxis and aeroplanes, in favour of trains, buses or car-pooling). This should extend beyond travel for things such as food, stationery, and printing.

• Utilise the UN's 17 ESG goals Use the UN's 17 ESG goals to further inspire you /check for other areas relevant to your business projects [2].

• Check you're compliant with industry standards Consult relevant industry bodies' guidance on ESG to shape and enhance your ESG considerations.

As people, we need to stop counting ourselves as separate to nature and this includes in our work. We are nature, and nature is us. It can be hard when you’re in your home or workplace office to feel like this, but the wider we try to make that ravine between our work and our place on this planet, and the communities we're a part of, the harder we’ll need to work to mend the damage already, and continuously being, done to Earth by the ignorance of our place in nature in our day-to-day lives.

You can read lots of evidence on the climate crisis, the importance of sustainable and regenerative work practices and the job of this article is not to convince you of why this is important, but to show and encourage you to adopt this upgraded model in your day-to-day projects.

The Project Management Quadrangle was created by Lian Mico CMRS (née Nuttall).