Assumptions and Constraints

Hi, I’m Richard Broo from truenorthpmpconsulting.com and this is another edition of Best Practices in Project Management.

Today, I’d like to briefly talk to you about a tool that I encourage all project managers to use, and that’s called an assumption and constraints register or log. And you use this to record all of the key decisions that were made for your project, and the assumptions and constraints that drove that key decision.

Why would you want to do that? Well, inevitably, over the course of your project, someone’s going to question one of your decisions. But if you record in real-time the decision that was made by you, the project team, project sponsor, or all in conjunction, you have an immediate log to go back to, to say at this point in time, the decision was made based on these assumptions and constraints. Let me show you what I use in my work as a project manager.

This is my assumptions and constraints register and believe me, you can construct this any way you can, but this is the one that I use. I record the data once the key decision was made and the assumptions and the constraints. that drove that key decision. And I record the decisions that will have an impact on project scope, schedule and budget. As you can see, it’s a very simple document.

And so I encourage you as a project manager, no matter how big or small your project, to use an assumption and a constraint register, it can only help you defend your decisions, review your decisions and make sure all the project stakeholders understand how the decisions were made and the assumptions and the constraints around it.

I’m Richard Broo from True North PMP Consulting. I wish you a great day and be a great project manager. Thanks and have a great day.