GPM & The Future of Project Planning
With the advent of personal computers in the mid-1980s, people enthusiastically embraced computer and software-based planning and scheduling practices. At this point, planning and scheduling began to shift away from traditional graphical and planning-centric methods. New, data-driven methods replaced graphical representations with sophisticated software scheduling engines, reversing the long-time credo of scheduling from “Logic rules, dates serve,” to “Dates rule, logic serves.”
In this new mindset, schedulers became more focused on hitting each deadline or milestone, and logic quickly became a secondary thought. Schedules were software-driven and riddled with anomalies that would normally have been adjusted and fixed through traditional graphic planning.
Finally, the shine of the new technology started to wear off. Stakeholders took notice of the changes in scheduling and started to reminisce about days of graphical planning.
The development of the Graphical Planning Method (GPM) and its interactive visual components allowed schedulers and stakeholders to embrace the technological advances (and still move away from sticky-note wall planning) while still incorporating graphical and time-scaled schedule representation. Instead of relying on databases and inline CPM scheduling engines, GPM software applications rely on graphical objects, encapsulating rules and computational algorithms that interact with continuous real-time process flows and an interactive graphics display.
Visual Collaboration Creates Better Planning
The goal of project planning is to create a workable schedule and plan that provides all stakeholders with the information they need – from activities and tasks to deadlines and milestones. However, the path to creating a workable schedule is riddled with complexities, especially if the schedule is developed within a silo.
Collaborative planning is one way to bridge the issues of silo scheduling and lack of information, but implementing collaboration in the planning process also presents its own set of challenges.
For collaboration to work well, project leadership must blend soft skills, technology and project governance to cultivate an environment of open communication and flow of information. True collaboration requires transparency, communication, symmetrical knowledge, and most importantly, that egos be set aside.
Resurrecting Collaborative Planning
As of late, collaborative planning has fallen by the wayside when it comes to project planning and scheduling. But collaborative, network-based planning can be resurrected by utilizing a Logic Diagramming Method (LDM) approach.
By taking advantage of the LDM’s ability to combine the strengths of both Arrow Diagramming Method (ADM) and Precedence Diagramming Method (PDM) in a unified diagramming technique, schedulers and project managers can bring planning back to the forefront of project scheduling.
The Casualty of Collaborative Planning
Industry experts agree that collaborative planning has become a casualty of Critical Path Method (CPM) programs and scheduling for a variety of reasons, including these:
- Fewer people use logic or arrow diagrams. The method of using arrows of non-scaled lengths to denote activities, then connecting related activities at common nodes to denote finish-to-start relationships is no longer popular.
- The personal computer. Now, savvy CPM schedulers can take scheduling shortcuts with very little planning.
- Manual calculation for PDM is often impractical. Especially in the field. So many people default to ADM, which is easily calculated.
- Difficulty in time-scaling PDM. As a result, schedulers rarely use PDM and communication issues increase.
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Facilitating Collaborative Project Planning
LDM combines the best practices of ADM and PDM. An LDM activity model creates an arrow diagram that accepts ADM and PDM logic: finish-to-start (FS), start-to-start (SS), finish-to-finish (FF), and start-to-finish (SF). Additionally, common nodes or a vertical link, depending on the relationship, connect activity relationships within the model.
Improving Budget Control with Job-Shop Scheduling
Even the most powerful computers with software that can solve problems can become quickly overwhelmed when balancing multiple jobs and limited resources. But in scheduling, one of the fundamental challenges is juggling the conceptual world of mathematics and the tangible world of job-shop manufacturing – and producing jobs in the shortest amount of time.
The main question that needs to be answered is always this: What is the best way to complete the work that needs to be done in the quickest time period? In job-shop scheduling, two separate groups of people are in play. Mathematicians see the problems from the ivory towers, while the management team tries to meet production schedule demands on the ground.
Oftentimes, the disconnect between these two groups causes delays and confusion in scheduling jobs and tasks. The mathematicians are focused on solving the math-based issues using determining devices, like a Turing machine. Even though there is a strong focus these days on solving issues with technology and devices, the jury is still out as to whether a computer can solve job-shop scheduling problems when multiple machines are involved. Frequently, job-shop scheduling that involves three or more workstations is labeled as NP-complete, which creates problems that take an extremely long time to calculate, and in turn delay the scheduling process.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments.
William Shakespeare had it right in 1609. And although the rest of this sonnet is somewhat less germane to planning and scheduling, this first line says it all. If you want your project to go well, its stakeholders must have a marriage of true minds.
I’m an optimist. I think most people who work on projects want them to go well, and it’s our responsibility as project managers to create situations that allow the well-intended to contribute, and to generate a transparent plan that manifests the team’s vision for the project.
In the past, visualizing interdependencies between functional areas (“swim lanes”) in a network diagram, on a timescale was not just hard, it was impossible. But the patented technology in NetPoint® supports this type of collaboration.
The Other
We at PMA sometimes get a bit myopic about scheduling. If it does not involve permits, excavation, and foundations, then it must not be a schedule. However, there is a big, bold world of non-construction-related schedules and scheduling applications out there, being used every day. In the past, I’ve worked extensively with production scheduling applications for the job shop environment. I presented a paper on this topic at the PMI Global Congress a couple of years back, entitled Job-Shop Scheduling Can Assist in Improving Manufacturing Budget Control. Should you ever find yourself sleepless and completely out of Ambien, I would highly suggest that you download this paper for immediate relief.
One of the more fascinating subcategories of scheduling can be found in the aerospace and defense industry. When a fighter jet or commercial airliner is built, the outer limits of project management, product management, configuration management, and project controls are tested. Most likely, the issue of quality management is top of the list! An ill-fitting window in a building is a nuisance, but in a plane…?
One of the premier scheduling tools used in the A&D market is Deltek Open Plan. Deltek is an organization that has mastered the art of producing compliant output for working with the federal government. Within their scheduling tool, you can develop some of the most intense schedules in the world, including hundreds of thousands of activities.
Adoption of Microsoft Project in IT Versus Construction: Different Animals, Same Cage?
The application of Microsoft Project as a scheduling tool within the construction industry is limited, although it is growing. Historically, Primavera (now Oracle Primavera) has dominated the construction scheduling industry, while Microsoft Project has gained much greater acceptance in the IT and Product Development marketplace.
I wonder about the difference in adoption rates between these two dominant software tools for project controls and scheduling. I was told by a senior Microsoft Executive that MS Project is a billion-dollar-a-year business for Microsoft, with over 40,000,000 copies in circulation. I also wonder what percentage of these licenses are accessed on a regular basis, and about the underlying quality of schedules developed using MS Project.
In both IT and construction, there’s a body of knowledge describing the proper methods to use when planning a project and creating a schedule. However, while it is common practice in the construction industry to create a detailed baseline critical path schedule, it is not common practice in IT. In all of my interviews, I found the application of critical path scheduling to be minimal in IT projects and ubiquitous in construction projects. Scheduling seems to be one of the areas of project controls which differs greatly between the two industries, which begs a deeper analysis. Why is a tool which is considered essential in planning and reporting progress on construction projects virtually unused in managing IT projects?
A Comprehensive Standard in Project Planning – Theory of Constraints
Project planning presents the first opportunity to identify and address bottlenecks and constraints. We have to be a little careful in using the term “constraints” in the construction and planning industry, because this is also a term of art in the world of scheduling. When creating a schedule, the scheduler or planner can set a time constraint on an activity. For instance, a SNE constraint requires that an activity can “Start No Earlier” than the date specified by the scheduler. Because of the algorithmic limitations of CPM, constraints must be used to hold a date later than the calculated early start date. While each of these constraints should be considered in light of a TOC project evaluation, they are only one small aspect of the application of TOC in construction projects.
Goldratt’s theory is comprehensive – it holds the overall project to a higher standard. In TOC, the ultimate measure of system effectiveness is throughput. What is throughput? It depends on the organization’s goals. For a manufacturing company, throughput is how efficiently product has been designed, produced, and sold and paid for, and at what cost. For a professional services firm, the equation is a little different, because in the world of professional services, the work cannot be produced and sold, but the consultants are inventory (a very costly asset when not productive, or, more cruelly, meat with an expiration date at the butcher counter).