Assumption Based Planning

Just finished Assumption Based Planning: A Tool for Reducing Avoidable Surprises, James A. Dewer, Cambridge University Press, 2002. In it was a powerful statement regarding planning and the difference between planning and scheduling

A plan is a tentative solution to the inexact problems posed by an uncertain future.

Even if the future could be known with certainty (which is unlikely), there are likely to be uncertainties about whether a given plan is the proper solution or approach to that future. Any plan, contains assumptions bout about what the future holds (the problems in the future) and about whether the plan will perform as hoped (the solution to those problems).

Planning is Not The Same As Scheduling

The schedule has found in most project management processes is not the same as a plan. The schedule is the list of tasks, their duration and their order for the work needed to implement the plan. The aerospace community uses the Integrated Master Plan / Integrated Master Schedule paradigm to connect these two. But the traditional project management guidance does not make use of this paradigm.

Instead, the current guidance for scheduling that is out for review by PMI, fails to separate planning from scheduling. And therefore project failures will continue unabated. Good news for our strategy consulting firm, bad news for the project stakeholders and funders.

Take a look at this book, along with a similar book also from RAND on Capabilities Based Planning, to see where the traditional (and official) source of project management falls into trouble from the start.

Missing Semantics of Project Management

A had a coffee on the way to a clients this week with a friend and colleague who teaches at CMU-West in the Project Management Master Program. He mentioned an interesting concept. The current traditional PM literature does not have the necessary "words" to have a proper discussion of how to successfully deliver a project. The PMI process areas are necessary but far from sufficient in this effort.

The fundamental problem with the proposed approach with the PMI Scheduling Guidance is that it starts with the assumption there is a plan. While all the steps in Figure 2.2 of the Practice Standard for Scheduling may be necessary, they represent a primary failure mode of almost all traditional scheduling processes - the plan is missing.

I'll hopefully get to the making a review of this guidance sometime soon, maybe in time for submission to PMI.