Using WPM to Control Unmeasurable Work!
Many projects have areas of work where it is difficult to measure progress such as culture change, various negotiations and consultations, and integrated CAD design. These are often critical to the overall success of the project but measuring progress using traditional methods is extremely difficult. This post looks at how Work Performance Management (WPM) can be used to assess progress in a consistent and reliable way.
Before the development of computer-aided design (CAD), measuring progress of a design activity was relatively straightforward. The likely number of drawings was known and the progress on each drawing could be assessed. A bit of mathematics and a reasonably reliable percentage complete could be calculated. Fast forward to the 21st century and the design function has become fully integrated process where all of the different design disciplines work together on a digital model held within a computer. You cannot see progress, so how can the status of the work be assessed?
Using WPM and shifting focus from history (what has been done) to the future (what still needs to be done) makes this assessment a straightforward five step process.
Step 1 – Establish Milestones.
There needs to be at least one milestone, the end of the work, with the milestone description defining precisely and completely what finished includes. When we know what done looks like, the WPM process can start.
Ideally the work should be divided into a number of discrete stages or phases, each with an equally clear definition of done attached to the phase milestone. Phases/stages may be sequential or overlapping.
In this example we are going to use fairly standard steps in a design process planned to take 26 weeks overall. The stages are:
1. Concept design accepted
2. 20% Design review (engineering proof of concept)
3. 80% Design review (all key components designed)
4. Full detailed design (design documentation 100% complete)
5. Final approvals, work complete
Some of these stages can be seen in the Design progress of the Sydney Opera House moving from the architectural sketch plan to the engineering concept – making each of the ‘sails’ a geometric segment of a circle, through to the full engineering design.
Step 2 – Estimate the time needed
The next step in the process is to allocate time to each of the phases, in this example:
- Concept design accepted 5 weeks
- 20% Design review 6 weeks
- 80% Design review 8 weeks
- Full detailed design 8 weeks
- Final approvals 2 weeks
Estimating the durations can be done using any appropriate technique and should take into account the available resources[1].
Step 3 – Baseline the plan
Once the plan for the work is agreed, baseline the plan in the WPM Spreadsheet, as in the example below (click to enlarge):
The unit of measure in this example is the planned weeks of work per phase, these are plotted as the Work Planned (WP). From the WPM perspective the ‘week’ is simply a metric, To fully complete the project there are 29 ‘weeks of work’ that need to be accomplished within the 26 calendar weeks allowed for the overall activity – this means some of the stages are working in parallel.
Step 4 – Measure progress
At regular intervals, the actual progress of work needs to be assessed:
- Where a milestone has been achieved, the Work Accomplished (WA) is equal to the Work Planned (WP).
- Where a phase is in progress, only part of the Worked Planned has been accomplished. This is assessed as follows:
- Ask the people responsible for the work to estimate how long they need to complete the phase.
- Deduct this estimate from the Work Planned duration.
- The residual is the Work Accomplished.
In this example, at week 13:
- Concept design accepted 100% complete = 5 weeks WA accomplished.
- 20% Design review 100% complete 6 weeks WA accomplished.
- 80% Design review 6 weeks estimate to finish, WA = 8 – 6 = 2 weeks accomplished.
Based on this input, the overall status of the work can be assessed.
Step 5 – Take Action
The WPM report is designed to be circulated. The report shows the project is currently 3 weeks behind, but at the finish of the Work Unit, the design will be completed 7.8 weeks late. This prediction assumes future work will proceed at the same rate as has been achieved to date.
This may be unavoidable, in which case actions are needed elsewhere to deal with the delay. In most cases, management should be able to take some action now to overcome, or at least reduce, the current prediction and bring the work to a successful conclusion within the allocated time.
Download the sample spreadsheet.
Discussion
This approach has a number distinct advantages over the alternative options:
- Sufficient Work Planned is retained to allow for the incomplete works to be accomplished without further delay occurring (assuming the estimate to complete is reasonable)
- The people doing the work are likely to be in the best position to estimate how long they need to finish
- Making the best estimate is incentivized:
- Padding the time needed to finish results in very poor performance being calculated for the work to date
- Being excessively optimistic means the people making the estimate have to try to achieve their optimistic estimate making delivery of the planned performance challenging.
The focus of WPM is:
- On planning and measuring the future work involved in achieving the required objective. How the work is managed is up to the people involved, various forms of agile, lean, or more traditional approaches such as CPM can be used.
- To identify challenges early to allow management time to do something to overcome negative variances.
- To measure how successful the selected management approach is, and assess the consequences of current performance levels.
The approach described above can be used in a wide range of situations:
- To estimate the remaining duration for work on an activity
- As part of the controls process in a project being managed using Work Performance Management (WPM)
- To assess progress in a Work Unit on a project applying Project Controls 3.0 (PC-3.0)
Conclusion
Management cannot manage without information to support decision making. The information derived using the above approach on work that is inherently unmeasurable may not produce a precisely accurate answer, but is good enough to use in most situations. The prediction is defensible, repeatable, and owned by the people involved in doing the work. If the management approach is consultative and supportive and the information is used to develop better outcomes everyone benefits.
For more on Work Performance Management (WPM) see: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/PMKI-SCH-041.php
For more on Project Controls 3.0 (PC-3.0) see: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/PC-3-00-Overview.php
[1] For more on duration estimating see: https://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/WhitePapers/WP1052_Time_Estimating.pdf
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