The Triple Constraint and Gator Swimmers of the Week #2

Every now and then we come up with fun little challenges for the blog. Some of the "swim dads" around the pool hit me with ideas of things to include in the blog as a challenge. (i.e. Can you tie-in Spiderman this week, or can you reference Michael Jackson's Thriller, or other stuff like that.) The challenge is trying to keep the blog flowing while bringing in the topic of the challenge seamlessly (or sometimes, the challenge may be the actual theme of the blog... which is probably the tougher type of challenge.) Anyway, I'll come back to the challenge thing in a minute.

In my other life as a project management guy, we have this thing called the triple constraint. This is a model that represents the three main factors that can effect a project: time, budget, and scope. The idea is that the overall quality of a project is determined by those factors and changes to any of them impact the others. For example, if you want to increase the scope of a project you must increase either the time it takes or the budget in order to compensate. There is a lot of debate if it every really works as intended, since projects so often tend to be over budget AND over cost AND don't meet the stated objectives... but that's a government rat hole we won't go down today. Long story short, I had a boss who always liked to say, "Cost, Schedule, or Scope... you can pick two." The idea being, we'll hit your target on two of them, but the client/customer needs to treat the third as a variable. You want it on time with all the bells and whistles.... well, that's going to cost you. You want it cheap, but functional? Won't have it done tomorrow, that's for sure.

Deep thoughts planning the next race... 

So, that's project management in a nutshell. You didn't know you'd learn so much in this blog, right? Anyway, now back to the challenge thing. Today's challenge is not from any external source in the "dad" network... its unintentionally self-imposed. I've only got about 20 minutes to get to the pool for the Green and White meet, and the blog ain't done. (Schedule constrained.... check.) Now, from what we've learned either the scope goes down or the cost goes up in this scenario. And in case you are wondering, you all get paid just as much as I do to write the blog... so that ought to tell you what the final triple constraint for this project looks like. You get two.

Luckily, our Swimmer's of the Week were not governed by such constraints, and they rocked it in the pool on Saturday. If you read the weekly summary yesterday, you already probably have an idea of our SOTW... as they were prominent there, too. So, without reiterating too much, congratulations to Alex North and Sheridan Phalen for their great performances which earned them the title of Swimmers of the Week.

Graceful entry.

 you recall, Alex cut nearly a second to leapfrog over the higher seeded Donaldson Run swimmer and take first in the Backstroke. The part I didn't mention yesterday is that other swimmer basically never loses. In the inner swimming circles, he's pretty well know as one of the "Big Dogs."  And now, Alex is also in that conversation. He also took the Freestyle with an All-Star worthy time and was part of two winning relays (the 11-12 IM and the Mixed Age Free Relay). That's a full 20 points earned on the day. Not too shabby.

The meet summary blog recognized the 15-18 Girls as the Age Group of the Week, so it only seems appropriate that one of its members and leaders would end up here, too. Sheridan won both of her individual events (15-18 Free and Fly) and was a member of the victorious 15-18 Medley Relay. Sheridan has emerged as a terrific team leader and is certainly demonstrating how to lead by example with those powerful swims.

Ok. Congrats you two. Blog complete. On time, on budget....

Go Gators.

Going to need a ruling here... is it still considered a Fly
picture if she's "flying" at the time? Because, as we
know, those are the best swim pictures.