Some core questions, indeed....

About budgets and such: Red Adair ( famous oil well firefigher) is quoted as saying, " You can have it cheap, fast, or good; pick any two."  Think about it: cheap and fast is probably not going to be very good, fast and good is gonna be expensive, and so on.  People planning a project for whomever is paying need to present the choice directly: what is most important? deadline? quality? budget? A sponsor who says they want all three needs to be educated in expectations management.

As for a deadline that is going to be missed, the most common choice is deliver less or get approval to extend the deadline. This again is the sponsor's choice. They may also elect to throw more money/resources at the project, which can help until the point of diminishing returms (the "mythical man-month" and all that). For me, the key is to address the problem as soon as it comes up, don't wait hoping things will improve somehow. Bad news now is much better than horrible news later.

As for the conflict management questions, I will defer to others who may have a more deft touch in these matters, but if I am really faced with it and I am not in charge of all the people involved, I escalate the problem til it gets to some one who is, they probably make a whole lot more money to deal with situations like that.

Hi Sonavi,

David has addressed the question on quality vs budget vs timescale and I can't improve on that!

I was intrigued by the question about "differences of opinion in solving a problem between the business and the technical team".

If the business are getting what they want (i.e delivered requirements that will enable the business to achieve the project objectives) then how the problem is solved does not really matter to the business as they are getting what DOES matter to the business (i.e. the objectives).

If the business are NOT getting what they want (i.e. the technical team are proposing a solution that does not deliver all requirements and hence compromises the business' ability to deliver objectives) then as a BA you need to do an impact analysis on what requirements are being compromised and estimate the impact on the objectives and hence business case. Get the technical team (or get the PM to get the technical team) to estimate the cost impact of delivering the requirements as specified. Having got the facts as best you can you can then assess which option best delivers the most in terms of project objectives and get your killer stakeholders (i.e. everyone who has the authority to directly or indirectly officially halt the project) to agree on how the problem will be solved.

Hope this helps.

Guy