Reliable Schedule Metrics: The Next Level of True Schedule Performance
A schedule is aligned when it meets the essential statement and is signed off by the appropriate parties. The essential statement is then expanded upon to offer greater insight into the actual mechanics of the metric. A1, below, is an example of a well thought out, well-defined metric.
Truly Understanding Schedule Metrics
Are you being seduced by meaningless beautiful graphics?
Scheduling metrics are the flavor of the month. But just as we find in Monte Carlo schedule Risk analysis many practitioners engage in the exercise of running schedule metrics without truly understanding the significance or implications of the output. This is understandable, especially since some of the output has no significance, meaning, or value. Or as Shakespeare wrote eons ago…
“it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
For instance, take a look at the Deltek Acumen Fuse Merge Hotspot. What does this metric tell us about our schedule? It highlights activities in the schedule that have a high number of predecessor tasks. Figure one would be an example of a Merge Hotspot.
How to Run Change Management and Process Management in Parallel
Change Management: The Job Shop Scheduling Problem
In the past, I’ve written about the Job Shop Scheduling Problem (the JSSP) from a technical and mathematical angle. I’m revisiting the JSSP this time with new insights I’ve gained on Change Management. I recently earned my certification in the Change Management Process by Prosci (the industry leader). The Change Management process should run parallel to project management, but often it does not.
Prosci developed the ADKAR model for Change Management. It’s similar in many ways to the process areas of the PMBOK, but it focuses on people rather than execution, monitoring and control of scope. ADKAR is an acronym for:
- Awareness of the need for change
- Decision to make the change
- Knowledge needed to change
- Ability to make the change
- Reinforcement of the change
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The Impact of Planning on Project Predictability
How does planning impact the predictability of project delivery? There is some good data available on this topic and it has been raising eyebrows in the project management world.
One good way to measure project delivery competence is by evaluating capital effectiveness. Capital effectiveness is an index measurement of how much money it takes to deliver a set dollar amount of capital projects within a one year period. Companies which have a high level of competency and predictability in project delivery have a low Capital Effectiveness Measurement (CEM).
The interesting findings come with the next layer of investigation into how the best and worst firms deliver projects. It turns out that firms with the lowest CEM spend a larger percentage of their overall capital budget on planning.
The least effective organizations invest the least amount of money into the project planning process. The most effective organizations invest the most amount of money into the project planning process.
Clueless Planning
If you have seen any of the AT&T ads featuring kids brainstorming, then you have an idea what it is like to be in a planning session without the relevant subject matter experts. If you haven’t seen any of these ads, then click here. We will wait…
Are you a Planning Felon?
Felonious Planning and the Law of Parsimony
The Law of Parsimony states that the simplest or most elegant solution is the best solution.
But in project planning, we often seem to think that complexity adds to the credibility of our plan. Is a 50,000 activity schedule necessarily more illustrative for group understanding than an elegant 300 activity schedule?
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Albert Einstein (no slouch in the understanding department) once said, “You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.”
Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail.
What Led Zeppelin said – “Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run there’s still time to change the road you’re on” – is not true. Well, at least not without significant time and cost implications for your project. It is well established that changes which occur later in a project’s life cycle are more costly than those that occur in its early definition phases. This is particularly true in the construction industry, where components may have already been fabricated or installed.
The planning phase of a project is the critical phase in which major directional and scope decisions are made. If the planning phase is given short shrift, the project runs a much higher risk of running late and over budget. This makes logical sense and is also backed up by data.
Top quintile performing organizations invest 7% of the total project budget in planning. Bottom quintile firms invest just 3.5%. The bottom performers pay dearly for this lack of investment in planning. The data shows that the cost of the overall execution phase of the project grows to 110% for these bottom performers, but is closer to 93% of the total budget for the top performers. Because the vast majority of the cost lies in the execution phases, a single percent variance in execution has a much larger impact on the overall project.
Planning: Just Some Ivory Tower Thing
It’s an interesting intellectual exercise, all this thinking about what might happen in the future and how we might get some project done. But does it really impact my life? How does effective or ineffective planning impact us on an individual basis?
Well, let’s ponder that question by looking at road construction and traffic. I’m from Chicago, which Forbes Magazine recently ranked as number 10 in terms of having the worst commuter traffic in the US. I no longer have a commute, because I moved close to the office, and I don’t miss it. The hours I spent on the road getting to work and getting home each day took a toll (pun intended).
The worst days for me happened when construction crews were behind schedule and did not open lanes closed for the previous night’s work before rush hour started. With close to half a million cars driving to downtown Chicago every day, a delay of just half an hour translates into 122 full-time work years of lost productivity. I know – I doubted the math as well! Let me show you how I calculated this number.
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It’s not rocket scheduling… it’s creativity
Dan Ward writes with great clarity on the topic of simplicity. Throughout his outstanding book, The Simplicity Cycle, Dan uses this fundamental graph.
Netpoint 5 Beta Review
Santosh Bhat at Australasian Project Planning recently got a copy of the beta version of Netpoint 5. Here what he had to say…
Introduction
For those not familiar with Netpoint or the Graphical Path Method, refer to more information on the Australasian Project Planning website here, or go direct to the source of all Netpoint and GPM information at PMA Technologies.
Background
Back in October 2014, I started a LinkedIn Group for Netpoint users and made a post of enhancement suggestions for Netpoint. Unbeknownst to me, the PMA technologies team were well into making the next major release of Netpoint.
At the Netpoint & GPM Conference in January 2015, the features of Netpoint 5 were presented, and now having had a chance to trial a Beta release of Netpoint 5, I’ve put together the following article reviewing some of the main new features to help those who may be moving from earlier releases – or those who may need just a little nudge to try Netpoint for their organisations or projects.
Disclaimer
As can be expected, there are some limitations of this review, Netpoint 5 is still in Beta release, no doubt there will be further modifications before a final release. Also, NetRisk was not a part of this Beta Trial, so some of the enhancements to NetRisk are not reviewed.
Activity Sizes and Patterns
Netpoint 5 now allows setting of sizes and patterns for activities.
