Project Management - you can't go into many directions at the same time

One of the most important things in managing your project is to have a clear vision on what is it you want to deliver. Of course we all want to deliver maximum features with very low defect ratios, within 6 months time frame. I have news for you this is usually not possible. Those are interdependent and usually investing in one of the constraints costs you neglecting another. You will be making priority decisions throughout the project, so why not to get clear on what are them at the beginning. That would also give your team a clarity on what is important to the project and how to act when they would have to make priority decision themselves. So keep everybody in sync by providing priorities in advance.

As it always come to comparing two (sometimes more) project characteristics when you are supposed to make a decision I would recommend to write down an order of priority list which has the most important characteristic on top and then descend to less important characteristics.

So for example if you are targeting visionaries with new innovative project you know that you have to generate a specific minimal features set, release it as soon as possible, and think about quality later. You can reflect it in your list. That means that if your defect levels are high but you still don't have complete feature set you will devote your time to implementing features and not improving quality. Second important thing is to define what are the must-haves from the list - things which have to be accomplished for the project to be successful.

Now, make sure you are on the same page with your sponsors and potential customers as otherwise you are heading for disaster. You must be sure that list reflects priorities of people who fund the project. Talk to the sponsors and get them to choose what's the most important by simply asking them. If they don't want to choose as they want 'perfect quality, full feature set, 6 months, 4 people team' ask questions which will mimic decision you will have to make: "let's say it's a month and we still don't have full feature set and quality is low, shall we focus on quality or on features? Or maybe delay the release?". Do whatever you can to get it out from your sponsor. If you can't make the decision yourself (in advance) and get sponsor to agree, sign off on it. Without that project will be dead on arrival - overconstrained projects rarely are harder to deliver they usually are impossible to deliver. Unless you are Chuck Norris of course.