PMI COS Seminar

This week, I will be presenting live from Australia the final session of the Fall PMI College Of Scheduling (COS) Wednesday Webinar Series: Scheduling in the Age of Complexity. This hour-long event will provide key insights for better scheduling from a personal level: What is the role of the scheduler and what is our future?

The PMI-COS Fall series is designed to bring highlights from the 6th Annual Scheduling Conference held in Boston, MA earlier this year.  Archived presentations are available at http://www.pmicos.org/ondemandlearning.asp if you find them of interest, why not sign up for the College?

The Featured Presentation:   Scheduling in the Age of Complexity

Scheduling was developed as a computer based modelling process at a time when ‘command and control’ was the dominant management paradigm. The mathematical precision of the early scheduling calculations were somehow translated into certain project outcomes. Today, the certainties are no longer so apparent. Most projects run late and uncertainty and complexity are starting to take center stage.

This paper identifies the key elements in Complexity Theory to suggest the real role of a schedule in ‘the age of complexity’. It concludes by recommending a way to re-establish the role of the scheduler in the successful delivery of projects in the 21st Century.

DATE:  Wednesday, December 2, 2009
TIME:   5:00pm EST (US Eastern Daylight Savings Time); Doors open at 4:45pm

LOCATION: http://pmi.acrobat.com/r31077016/

There is no dial-in telephone option for the presentation. All voice will be through the classroom platform.

Schedule Density

I have mentioned the work being done by the CIOB (UK) to develop a practice standard for scheduling in a few posts. This valuable work is now at the public comment stage and has a number of really innovative ideas.

The concept of schedule density contained in the CIOB ‘guide’ is not dissimilar to rolling wave planning but has far more practical advice.

The concept is based on the idea that it is practically impossible to fully detail a schedule for a complex project at ‘day 1’ – too many factors are unknown or still to be developed. The CIOB advice is to plan the overall project at ‘low density’, expand the work for the next 9 months to ‘medium density’ and plan the next 3 months at ‘high density’.

Schedule Density Over Time

Low density activities may be several moths in duration. Medium density activities are no longer than 2 months and focused on one type of work in one specific location. High density activities are fully resourced, with a planned duration no longer than the schedule update period and with specific workers allocated.

Activites are expanded to increase density

As the ‘density’ of the schedule is increased, the plan takes into account the current status of the work, current production rates and what is required to achieve the overall objective of the project.

This approach has a range of advantages over more traditional ways of scheduling not the least of which is engaging the people who will be responsible for doing the work in the next 2 to 3 months in the detailed planning of ‘their work’.

More later.

Advances in Project Schedule Management

In 2007/2008, the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) undertook a survey of the state of time management in the UK construction industry. The findings painted a dismal picture of the current state of planning and scheduling with low usage of CPM schedules, minimal updating and almost no proactive forward management (download report summary). On a more general basis, the construction and engineering industries were at the forefront of effective time management through the 1960s, 70s and 80s (along with defense industries) which would suggest other areas of business management such as IT are unlikely to be better situated.

Based on these findings, the CIOB believes that it is essential to educate both project planners and schedulers in construction time management best practice with an aim to reduce the incidence of delayed completion on construction projects. To achieve this, the CIOB have adopted a three-phase strategy to provide the required standards of performance in effective time control:

• Phase 1
  The education training and accreditation of project schedulers, including:
  • The development of a ‘Guide to Good Practice in Project Programming and Scheduling’.
  • The production of an educational framework for current and future project schedulers.
  • The accreditation of qualifications in time management.
  • The dissemination of the Guide to other professions in the industry.
• Phase 2
  The promotion of amendments to standard forms of contract to facilitate effective time management.
• Phase 3
  The education training and accreditation of project planners.

Download the CIOB’s policy Statement.

Phase 1.1, the development of the Guide, is nearing completion. The provisional draft of the Guide is nearly ready for public comment and feedback.

I have had the privilege to be part of the team working on the development of the Guide and believe it is a major advance on anything currently available. Whilst focused on construction/engineering, the skills of effective planning and scheduling are highly transferable. Consequently, when published, the guide will be a valuable resource for PMO Managers and schedulers in most industries.

More information shortly……

Schedule Float

Scheduling has lost a lot of float in the last few years! And arguably the practice of scheduling is sinking…..

Are the two phenomena connected? Is this a total disaster or largely irrelevant??

As part of my research for the new CIOB scheduling guide, I have been digging through some old books and resources from the 1960s and 70s. 40 years ago, float was a far more sophisticated concept compared to today but how significant is this loss of insight?

You are invited to read the discussion paper ‘Schedule Float’ and then comment on this blog.

The Effective Management of Time in Complicated Construction Projects

The CIOB is finalising the publication of ‘The Guide to Good Practice in the Effective Management of Time in Complex Construction Projects’ with a public consultation period planned before Christmas leading to publication in 2010.

The primary purpose of this Guide is to set down the standards of project scheduling necessary to facilitate the effective and competent management of time in construction projects by defining the standard by which project schedules will be prepared, quality controlled, updated, reviewed and revised in practice.

Before embarking on the guide, the CIOB conducted a survey between December 2007 and January 2008 of the state of time management in a range of UK construction projects. The outcome of the survey was surprising. On simple construction projects, the range of outcomes (late, on time, early) were more or less the same regardless of the use or non-use of effective time management processes.

However, as the projects became more complicated, the difference between projects with an effective time management system and those without became significantly more noticeable. Projects with a well defined time management system were far more successful than those without!

The definition of simple and complicated derived from this study is:

• Simple Projects comprise those in which construction has the following characteristics:
  • design work is completed before construction starts;
  • single building or repetition of identical buildings;
  • less than 5 stories high;
  • without below-ground accommodation;
  • carried out to a single completion date;
  • without phased possessions or access;
  • with services not exceeding single voltage power, lighting, telephone, hot and cold water and heating;
  • a construction period of less than 9 months;
  • with a single contractor; and
  • with less than 10 sub-contracts.
• Complex Projects comprise those in which construction comprises, one or more of the following characteristics:
  • design work is to be completed during construction
  • more than one building
  • more than 5 stories high
  • with below-ground accommodation
  • with multiple key dates and/or sectional completion dates
  • with multiple possessions or access dates
  • with short possessions
  • with services exceeding single voltage power, lighting, telephone, hot and cold water and heating.
  • accompanied by work of civil engineering character
  • a construction period greater than 12 months
  • with multiple contractors
  • with more than 20 sub-contracts

This opens the question why? I would suggest the likely answer, transferable to any project and any industry, is in two parts; both related to stakeholders and communication.

The initial benefit of the process of developing the schedule on a complicated project is the insights the act of creating the schedule gives to the project management team. It is impossible to effectively communicate to the project team and other stakeholders what has to be done when if the project management group don’t have a very clear idea themselves.

‘Simple projects’ are small enough and routine enough to be mapped out in an experienced managers mind. The person intuitively knows what needs to be done. As the project becomes more complex the analysis and serial decision making inherent in the schedule development process creates insights, new information and allows the testing hypothesis until an acceptable solution is devised. At the end of the planning process, a way forward has been determined, optimised and agreed.

The greater benefit though is likely to be in the area of coordination and communication during the work of the project. No schedule is ever perfectly correct. But having an agreed schedule that everyone works towards achieving minimises coordination issues and as elements of the work occur out of alignment with the schedule, the schedule and the variance information provide the foundation for proactive discussion and decision making.

A final intangible benefit of having a schedule has been identified in new research by Jon Whitty. It would appear that simply having a schedule is important for the credibility of the project manager. The project manager’s managers expect the PM to have a schedule and consequently give more credibility to communications from the PM if the schedule is present.

The challenge facing both PMs and their managers as a consequence of these findings is to determine for their industry the difference between simple projects where minimal systems are needed and complicated project where not having a reasonably sophisticated system to help manage time, and other elements of the project, is a distinct liability.

It would seem size does matter! And the old saying ‘if you fail to plan, you plan to fail’ really only applies to the larger more complicated projects. 

Mosaic has developed a range of papers on the art and science of planning and scheduling available from Mosaic’s Planning and Scheduling Home Page.

Resourcing Schedules – A Conundrum 2

Following on from comments to my post ‘Resourcing Schedules – A Conundrum’  there are still some basic problems to resolve.

As the commentators suggest, KISS is certainly an important aspect of effective resource planning: ie, planning resources at an appropriate level of detail for real management needs. But the basic issues remain; you cannot rely on a scheduling tool to optimise the duration of a resource levelled schedule.

We use the basic network below in our Scheduling courses (download the network – or – see more on our scheduling training)

Network for Analysis (download a PDF from the link above)

No software I know of gets this one ‘right’.

When you play with the schedule, the answer to achieving the shortest overall duration is starting the critical resource (Resource 3) as soon as possible.

To achieve this Resource 2 has to focus 100% on completing Task B as quickly as possible BUT, Task C is on the Time Analysis critical path not Task B and 99% of the time software picks C to start before B.

This is not a new problem, a current paper by Kastor and Sirakoulis International Journal of Project Management, Vol 27, Issue 5 (July) p493 has the results of a series of tests – Primavera P6 achieved a duration of 709, Microsoft Project 744 and Open Workbench 863. Play with the resource leveling settings in P6 and its results are 709, 744, 823, 893 – a huge range of variation and the best option (P6) was still some 46% longer than the time analysis result . Other analysis reported in the 1970s and 80s showed similar variability of outcomes.

As Prof. George Box stated – All models are wrong, some are useful… the important question is how wrong does the model have to be before it is no longer be useful.

Computer driven resource schedules are never optimum, done well they are close enough to be useful (but this needs a good operator + a good tool). And good scheduling practice requires knowing when near enough is good enough so that you can use the insights and knowledge gained to get on with running the project. Remembering even the most perfectly balanced resource schedule will fall out of balance at the first update…..

How you encapsulate this in a guide to good scheduling practice is altogether a different question. I would certainly appreciate any additional feedback.

Resourcing Schedules – A Conundrum

I have recently been forced to think about the value of incorporating resources into schedules. At one level it’s not too hard to do, but is it useful?

From one aspect, it is impossible to schedule at any level without the active consideration of resources. Resources do the work in a given time and changing either the quality or quantity of the resource has some inevitable impact on duration. Consequently, it is critical to know the resource assumptions used in planning to validate the schedule and more importantly understand deviations from the plan during the execution of the work.

Generally what I mean by term ‘considered’ is the basic need to know the resources needed to undertake the work on every activity:

• At the feasibility stage big picture tied to the strategy for the project.
• At the contract stage to determine which tasks are the responsibilities of what contractor/subcontractor.
• At the weekly level, the supervisors need to know who is working where and when.

These decisions also need to be recorded and monitored. How much detail is recorded in the scheduling tool and what scheduling functions are used though is an altogether different question – this I refer to as ‘quantitative’ resource analysis.

Consideration is not the same as quantitative analysis within a scheduling tool. Quantitative resource analysis requires answers, or assumptions to be made, about a range of uncertain issues. Some of the nearly insoluble questions include:

1. There is no direct ‘straight line’ correlation between resource quantities and either task or project durations – there is a complex ‘J’ curve relationship and in some circumstances a negative correlation. For more on this see: The Cost of Time or for a more learned approach, The Mythical Man Month by Frederick P. Brooks Jr. originally published in 1975.
2. It is nearly impossible to define skill levels for people who will be employed on a project at some time in the future but we know a skilled worker can be far more productive than an unskilled worker. The skill of the worker changes the production rates and consequently the durations.
3. The other issue is the degree of motivation/moral of the people – a highly motivated team will always accomplish more than a ‘business as usual’ team and both more than a de-motivated workforce. Therefore the question of management and more importantly leadership also influence resource performance and therefore durations.

These unanswerable questions are complicated by the fact all scheduling software fails to optimally level resources . Basically the tools get it wrong the only question is how wrong: some are not too bad others unmitigated disasters. Resource scheduling needs both knowledge and common sense – no software applies common sense yet. But we have to plan resources – they need working space, accommodation, etc. And resources are the source of all cost expended on the project!

Another really interesting factor is the emerging understanding of the interaction between the schedule and the behaviour of people. IF the people believe the schedule represents a realistic approach to their work, they will (and do) modify their behaviours to conform to the schedule to be seen as successful. Obviously if resources are included in the schedule it is far more credible than if they are not. This was touched on in Scheduling in the Age of Complexity (read from p19 – the rest is not relevant and it’s a horribly long paper…. with a bit of luck this may turn into a book in a couple of years….).

So in conclusion I would suggest, consideration of resources is critical, as is having some form of method statement; together they dictate the planned durations of the work.

However, whilst using scheduling tools to calculate and level resource demands is useful, and can help gain valuable insights, you need real skill on the part of the scheduler and the right tools to achieve sensible results.

My feeling is the value of the process to the development of a realistic and achievable schedule depends on the circumstances of the project. Probably the biggest determinant of the value of quantitative resource analysis is the ease of adding to or reducing the resource pool. If this is easy, rudimentary quantitative analysis is all that’s needed, if any. If it is difficult to quickly change the resource pool far more rigour is required (eg, developing remote area mine sites in Australia). The quantitative analysis will still be ‘wrong’ but it is important to reduce the level error as much as possible.

This is a complex issue – what are your thoughts?

Project Planning

The Association for Project Management (UK) released it is ‘Introduction to Project Planning’ last year. This is a high level overview of all of the planning processes needed for a successful project outcome including scope, risk, cost, schedule, quality, procurement, resources and earned value (the subject of another APM standard).

The authors of this guide feel the discipline of planning is undervalued, its value is not recognised and the overall process is misunderstood by many in the project management community. I tend to agree!

The guide is a useful adjunct to both the APM BoK and the PMI PMBOK® Guide and is focused on the whole of the planning process. The first key message is planning has the most to contribute early in the project:

Planning Leverage during the Project Lifecycle

The second is the sequence the key questions good planning should answer, are asked in. If you don’t know ‘why’ the project is being undertaken it is nearly impossible to deliver valuable benefits at the end.

One element missing from the guide (but implicit in the way the guide is structured) is the very different skills needed by the planner during the concept phase of a project compared to the detailed planning and the maintenance phases. This is discussed in ‘The Roles and Attributes of a Scheduler’.

Overall the Guide is a useful addition to most libraries and fills a gap between the main BoKs and the specific scheduling and earned value guides.

A Long Tail

One of the key books that started my interest in risk, uncertainty and ultimately complexity theory was Against the gods: The remarkable story of risk written by Peter L Bernstein, and published in 1996 when Peter was aged 77! This book explained much of the history behind the development of risk management in a way that I could understand and is a recommended read for anyone involved in managing projects. Despite his success, Peter Bernstein never retired, and at the time of his death last month, aged 90, he was working on another book on risk. As authors go, a very long and distinguished career.

The limitations of the risk framework built in the 18th century and so clearly described in Bernstein’s book have been defined and expanded in recent times in The Black Swan by N.N. Taleb (another recommended read). Taleb’s ideas are discussed in my post Risky Business.

The major failing of traditional risk models is the issue of ‘boundaries’. Rules of probability such as The law of large numbers work if the population is bounded. The problem with project data is that there are no limits to many aspects of project risk. Consider the following:

• You plot the distribution and average the weight of 1000 adult males. Adding another person, even if he is the heaviest person in the world only makes a small difference to the average. No one weighs a ton! The results are normal (Gaussian-Poisson) and theories such as the Law of Large Numbers and Least Squares (Standard Deviation) apply.
• You plot the distribution and average the net wealth of 1000 people. Adding Bill Gates to the group causes a quantum change in the values. Unlike weight, wealth can be unlimited. Gaussian-Poisson theories do not apply!

Most texts and discussion on risk assume reasonable/predictable limits. Managing variables with no known range of results is rarely discussed and many project variables are in this category. For more on this see Scheduling in the Age of complexity.

Fortunately our colleague, David Hillson’s latest book Managing risk in projects will be published by Gower on 11 August 2009. This book is part of the Gower Foundations in Project Management series, and will provide a concise description of current best practice in project risk management while also introducing the latest developments, to enable project managers, project sponsors and others responsible for managing risk in projects to do so effectively. I would suggest another ‘must read’ if you are interested in project management.

More later….

The Last Planner and other Old Ideas

I never ceased to be amazed by the number of people who either have no knowledge of project management history and established practice or chose to ignore established practice in favour of a new fad that is the old practice recycled. Given modern project management is less than 60 years old this is a worry (for more on this see The Origins of Modern Project Management)

One of the more annoying ‘new ideas’ is the Last Planner® this methodology has at its root, the idea that the best people to involve in the planning process are the front line supervisors and team leaders who will actually have to do the work. This is a really great idea that has been used by good schedulers since the 1960s. Certainly when I was learning the craft of scheduling construction projects in the early 1970s one of the key messages from my teachers was that there was no point in developing a schedule unless; (a) the foreman though the sequence of work was best and (b) the foreman understood what was involved in the work. In effect my job was to make sure the foremen totally agreed with and understood all of the work implications in the schedule. As a bonus the foreman also was likely to know more about what was involved in doing the work than a green scheduler so we ended up with a realistic and achievable schedule.

Fast forward 40 years and a whole new idea called Last Planner® is being marketed with the idea the front line supervisors should be actively involved in scheduling the work using techniques such as affinity diagrams (Last Planner calls this post-it-notes stuck on the wall). There’s nothing wrong with the ideas in Last Planner® it just not new – the fundamental processes were being used by skilled schedulers 40+ years ago.

The reason this sort of recycling is seen by so many as ‘new ideas’ has been canvassed in A Brief History of Scheduling – Back to the Future. The advent of desktop PCs virtually wiped out the scheduling profession.

Similar adaptation of sound ideas from the past can be found in the concepts of ‘Light’ and ‘Lean’ project management. Both of these seem to be mantras of the Agile software development community (no guys – Agile is not a project management methodology, it is a way to develop software: see Agile is NOT a Project Management Methodology and two later posts).

Lean manufacturing was made famous by Toyota. Some of the key principles such as minimising unnecessary movement and waste, simplifying process and continuous improvement have huge potential in both software development and project management. But Lean is Lean, it was developed by Toyota and can be adapted to areas other than manufacturing. It’s a good idea but it was not invented as a part of Agile.

Light is a different philosophy focused on minimisation of unnecessary overhead. Complex plans and processes should be simplified, but only to remove excess complication, not to remove core requirements. This philosophy is certainly a part of Agile but again hardly revolutionary. Its roots can be traced back to the ideas of Scientific Management in the early 1900s and Parkinson’s writings in the 1950s.

Perhaps as the song goes; ‘everything old is new again’? Or maybe only a few of us have been around long enough to either remember the song or know our history?? At least a few of us old time schedulers will be able to kill off a few more brain cells in Boston next week (by the moderate use of good wine and beer) at the PMI COS conference ‘Revolutionary Scheduling’. It will be interesting to see all of the new ideas as well as adaptations of old ones.