The Pad Abort 1 Program Event for Orion has video now.
The structure of the Plan and the Schedule to implement the plan follows the standard IMP/IMS topology has been discussed many times here.
The Event here is the Pad Abort 1 flight test. The Accomplishments are the "entry criteria" for the Event. This describes what has to be done - 100% done - in order to conduct the Pad Abort 1 Flight Test. This Event is named Pad Abort 1 Flight Test Complete. This "past tense" statement reinforces the notion of "done."
The work needed to fulfill these Accomplishments is done in Work Packages. The "exit criteria" for each Work Package is defined in the Criteria. These are tangible evidence measures of "Done," for the tasks in the Work Package.
The sequence of Work Packages, and therefore the sequence of Tasks in the Work Packages is the Integrated Master Schedule (IMS).
This paradigm provides several significant advantages over the typical "horizontal" schedule. The usual "shop floor" schedule - a sequence of all the tasks, hooked up into some network.
- The description of the increasing maturity of the deliverables for the Program Event is defined in the percent complete of the Criteria and rolled up to the Accomplishments.
- The "map" of how this increasing maturity flows is defined in the relationships between the Accomplishments.
- The vertical integration is the starting point of defining what "Done" looks like, not the horizontal execution of the task activities.
- This inverts the conversation by measuring progress as the accomplishment of work in units of physical percent complete. Not the passage of time or consumption of resources.
For Scrum like IT projects, this is an architecture for larger projects that states how the iterations move the maturity final end product, which is missing in the traditional Scrum project process.
