PMI Community Post

Just got an email from PMI about their Europe, Middle East, Asia conference. With it was a ad for a "Quick Quiz" about Project Management

Quick Quiz
No matter how carefully I plan, my project reports often show the project to be over budget and behind schedule. My team works hard, so how can I stop this discouraging trend?

 

1. Bring all projects in on budget and on schedule with no exceptions
2. Start an educational campaign for your manager and team
3. Pad each activity with extra time and money
4. Ask customers where you can cut quality so that your projections are more on      target

The answer, according to the site selling PM training is B.
    Now what's interesting is the approach.

• Use realistic daily estimates
• Set panic limits ahead of time
• Track progress at reasonable intervals
• Consider posting details
• Use automated deadlines built into software

Each of the answers at the link misses a critical concept in the "scheduling" of projects:

1. What is the capacity for work? - how much "should" the team be producing for each time period invested? If the plan shows more production than is possible, you'll be late and over budget.
2. What is the breakage rate for the work produced? - unless all deliverables are "perfect," there will be "scrap, breakage, rejects, returns." What is the breakage rate for this project, the work streams within the project or even the individuals on the project? Without this knowledge, the project will be over budget and behind schedule.
3. What's the actually "Performance Factor" for the project? - is the project "under performing?" Is it steadily under performing. If so, then adjust the Estimate to Complete and the Estimate at Completion accordingly.

The final suggestion of "using automated deadlines," does absolutely nothing to remedy an under performing project. Oh it may provide some better visibility, but why doesn't the project manager have this visibility now. How will the "deadline" attribute on a task help. In fact assigning "deadlines" in MSFT Project actually hides the fact your "off target baseline."
Here's the Problem
    If the project plan does not show how you're going to measure Physical Percent Complete, there is no way to determine breakage, team capacity for work, and the value of the produced outcomes. This approach does not "fix" a broken project. But it does make the problems visible.

1. We're over committing our staff
2. We produce crap and call it done
3. We don't deliver value to the customer in units of measure meaningful to the customer
4. We don't have finite 100% complete units of work, that are never revisited (unless there is scope change).

The approach is called - Deliverables Based Planning. It is the basis of all agile development methods. It is critically important to take this approach when planning and executing a project.

In the end the answer is "C" but not the reason you think
    The schedule must have slack, protection buffers, management reserve and risk buy down activities. How much slack? Enough to cover the normal variances in the durations of the deliverables. Enough to account for the capacity for work in the team, there breakage levels and "normal" performance.
    The "Pad" that is advised against is exactly what is used in large complex projects. The amount of "slack" is developed using Monte Carlo simulation, Theory of Constraints, Technical Performance Measurement and Risk Buy Down processes.
    This is the core problem with PMI and its training approach. They actually don't have a concept of how scheduling takes place in domains where scheduling is a  Critical Success Factor - like flying to Space Station, closing a nuclear weapons plant, starting up a power station or paper mill.