That's a good description of what schedules look like when they are assembled in the absence of any program architecture. This architecture is of course best built using the Integrated Master Plan (IMP) paradigm.
Without going into the details of the IMP, let's look at the step-by-step approach to turning the needs of the customer into credible project architecture:
- Determine what "done" looks like in terms of the customer needs.
- What capabilities does the customer need at what time during the life of the project?
- What are the Measures of Effectiveness (MoE) of these capabilities.
- The MoE's are operational measures of success that are related to the achievements of the mission or operational objectives evaluated in the operational environment, under a specific set of conditions.
- These capabilities and their measures are independent of any technical implementation
- Determine what must accomplished into order to produce the "capability."
- These accomplishments are the "entry" criteria to the presence of the Capability.
- The accomplishments are stated in the past tense. For example for an insurance claims processing system, such an accomplishment would be to capture all the existing policy holders in a single integrated database in preparation for migration to the next system.
- The Capability for the system is "collect all policy holders"
- Determine the Criteria, the "exit Criteria" for the work packages that perform the work to produce the Accomplishment
- This is where the scheduling processes start.
- The work is produced through Work Packages.
- Each Work Package produces an outcome, preferably a single outcome.
- This outcome is described in Measures of Performance (MoP)
- Assemble the Work Packages in a logical order that produces the outcomes in the best order for the project.
- The assembly of Work Packages is the "schedule" for the project.
- This sequence is for the Work Packages, the Tasks inside the Work Packages are sequenced by the Work Package Manager.
- The task sequence is called the "supplemental schedule," and is able to adapt to the emerging needs of the development process.
- This is where "agile" enters the picture.
- At the boundary of the Work Package sequencing and the Task arrangements within the Work Package.
- Since each Work Package has an "outcome" that contributes to the increasing maturity of the business capabilities.
- This is where the connection between "business value" and the project performance measures takes place.
- With this connection - between business value and project performance - project management and business management are joined
With this joining the "dog's breakfast" is avoided, replaced by a logical project architecture, describing the tangible evidence of progress to plan measured in units meaningful to both project management and the customer.
The relationships between these measures is
These measures are the "glue" for the architecture of the project's schedule. Without the "glue" the schedule is just a list of work, hooked together in any olde arbitrary way - like watching dogs eat spaghetti.
