David Schmaltz is not a blog I visit too often. Too fluffy for my tastes. But once in awhile he has something that piques my interest. This time it resonates for reasons David may not appreciate. David seems to always be on a tear against scientific management, government programs, the military in general. Usually parroting the NYT misinformation about some defense program. That said, David is starting to echo a message that has been promulgated in the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR), Defense FAR (DFAR), and DoD Guidelines for some time. Amazing actually that these words come from his site...paraphrased of course
You must measure progress success in projects by measuring what the project produced - the nouns of the project
Yes, Outcomes versus Output is the language of project success. There's a comment on David's Blog that kinda hints at what is the basis of the Integrated Master Plan / Integrated Master Schedule (IMP/IMS) paradigm used in DoD and FAR acquisition contracts greater than $20M.
Defining what "done" looks like in terms of Accomplishments and their Criteria is the way we speak about progress. Measuring the progress toward "Done" at "matuity assessment points" (program events) is what IMP/IMS is all about. Adding Earned Value to assess physical percent complete and producing the forecast of actually landing on time, on budget, at the planned degree of maturity - that's what Program Planning and Controls does on those pesky defense system programs.
