Dear PM Advisor. June 10, 2013

Dear PM Advisor,

You advise the teams to develop their own project objectives during their first planning session. That's all great and it must be pretty easy to meet this objective since you get the dates and budget from bottom-up estimates. But in my company we are handed those constraints from management before we ever start planning the project. How do you handle that?

Constrained in Maryland

Dear Constrained,

Don't be concerned. I'm here in the real world with you. Projects don't enter the planning phase from a vacuum. There is usually a lot of work done in advance before a project is authorized to enter the planning phase. And in these earlier phases there are promises made about budget and schedule. Regardless of how many assumptions and questions we attach to these earlier objectives, management is still hearing a date and a budget and expect you to meet these.

So the typical scenario is that your team starts planning the project but are told by those who authorized the project when they expect you to finish and how much money you are expected to spend. What you need to do is record that information as the management mandated constraints and then go ahead and plan the project from the bottom-up anyway. Answer all these questions:

• What activities are required to complete the scope?
• How long does each activity take?
• How are the activities linked to each other?
• How much does each activity cost? 

From the answers to these questions you will determine the bottom-up estimate of project budget and schedule. And they won't match the management mandated constraints. What do you do next?

Try some alternatives analysis to see if fast-tracking or crashing will reduce the timeline to meet the constraint. Try using cheaper suppliers or resources on some items. Remember that these techniques add risk and cost to the project. Look at reducing scope.

Then it is time to have the conversation with management. Here is the talk-track I want you to use:

• You've asked for us to do A for $X by Y
• We haven't figured out how to deliver A by that YET (Yet is a powerful word)
• We can run these two deliverables in parallel but that adds the following risk
• We can use this supplier and these cheaper resources to these activities and add this risk
• We can add resources to these three activities and reduce the end date by this amount
• We can reduce the scope by this item and bring the date to your expected end date
• Please let me know your thoughts on these alternatives

Then allow them to make the trade-offs required to deliver what they can. It is up to the team to perform the alternatives analysis so that management has the facts to make the intelligent decisions. This is why they get the big bucks. This is another reason why you need to make assumptions in your activities regarding cost and schedule so that this alternatives analysis can be performed. 

Once management has made their decision, re-baseline the project and strive for early delivery of each activity so that you have some buffer when problems occur and you can still hit the deadlines.

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send your questions to bfieggen@gmail.com

Invention to turn text into voice

Liat Negrin, an employee at OrCam, wears a device made by the company that consists of a camera and a small computer.
Copyright NY Times 2013

Here's another great invention. Glasses that have a camera that reads text and translate it into words that are read into your ear. Designed by OrCam for the visually impaired, it is capable of reading any English words and whisper them into your ear.

What I need is the sister device, not yet invented. How about a device that listens to words and projects subtitles under people's faces. Then you can satisfy the hearing impaired.

Dear PM Advisor. June 3, 2013

Dear PM Advisor,

How do I show parallel activities under one Deliverable in my Work Breakdown Structure? And what about dependent variables where some work only happens if A occurs and other work happens if B occurs? 

Divided in Delaware.

Dear Divided,

A lot of people, when first building a WBS and placing Post-its on a wall representing work, are tempted to turn it into a flow chart, simply because they've done this before. That is NOT what a Work Breakdown Structure is. The WBS is a breakdown of WORK required to complete the project. There is no element of TIME in the structure.

That being said, most people, when building a WBS, will think chronologically. What is the first activity needed to complete this deliverable? What is the second? And so on down the line. When two activities occur in parallel, they want to draw them in parallel. Please don't do that.

For one thing, the structure of WBS won't support that. Deliverables are placed next to each other and the activities line up underneath them. If you try to split them, you'll have to move the Deliverables around. But it's not needed here. When you build your schedule, then the time comes to indicate the timing of the activities. So load up the activities under each deliverable in roughly chronological order and parallel activities line up in a column. It's up to you if you want to put one set of activities under the other set or dovetail them. Either way, the schedule will sort it out.

Now, your second question deals with optional pathways, If-Then statements. Don't build these into your WBS. If you did, how would you show that in your schedule? There are more complex ways of showing loops like GERT but I don't recommend them for normal projects. Leave this technique to organizations like NASA.

Instead indicate the most likely scenario in your WBS and document the assumption and risk associated with this option. People reviewing your project plan may challenge your assumption and ask you to plan for the other option. That's OK. Remember, people approving your Project Plan are not just approving your cost and schedule, they are also approving the assumptions you are using to reach these major constraints.

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send your questions to bfieggen@gmail.com

Sixty-third Excerpt from 'Twelve Towers'

          That night, Gwilym had an epiphany for his human resource problem. The next day, once the crew was working hard, he went back into the village and purchased some cheap, colored cloth and a pair of spring scissors.

          He set about cutting this cloth into many small squares, each about an inch square. Then he took some paper and lined it like they had yesterday with axes showing dates on the x axis and number of people on the y axis. Each week on the x-axis and each half person on the y axis was one inch long. He made one for each skill. Then he called Fred in.

          Gwilym explained his idea to Fred. “Each one of these colored squares indicates half a person of a particular skill working for a week.” He placed two on top of each other. “This represents a whole person working for a week. We place this on the chart and we can see what we need given the current schedule. Then, when we change the schedule, we move the pieces of cloth around to make sure we don’t overload our people.”

          Fred’s eyes grew wide as he understood, and the two men worked together, placing squares, adjusting the schedule, moving squares, sometimes cutting them further down to indicate a quarter person on even vertically to indicate someone working for a day or two rather than for a week. Within a few hours they were done. They had reached a point where the schedule could be met without stretching resources anywhere. There were a few occasions when they would have to bring on some extra laborers and other occasions when work off the critical path would have to sit until there was a lull in other activities. But their schedule was doable now and the men would have plenty of warning when they could take time off the project and work their fields.

          During dinner they stitched the cloth pieces to the paper. Then Fred redid the calendar and placed it on the wall where every member of the team could see it. As the crew left the job-site at the end of the day, Gwilym showed it to them. Each crew member followed their plan on the calendar and took note of the days they would be expected to leave the project.

          “How good are you at predicting de future, Gwilym?” asked Tollemache.

          “The schedule should be pretty accurate for the next few weeks. Then things will happen that will change the predictions but I will keep this calendar up-to-date. Keep checking back to see how things will change. If you have plans that cannot be changed due to your farm, it becomes my problem.”

          The men nodded and walked off home. “What do tha call this tool, Gwilym?”

“Resource planning. No. There will be other plans we need for resources like stone and wood. How about Human Resource Plan? Yes. I like that. Are you putting it in your book?”

          “Aye, Gwilym. The song was getting too hard to rhyme. Would you like to see it?”

Gwilym nodded and Fred showed him the book. He had a page in the front that titled all the tools and each page that followed described the tools in detail. So far, the title page had the following entries:

          Charter

          Stakeholder List

          Project Management Plan

          Requirements

          Scope

          Work Breakdown Structure

          Activities

          Activity Sequence

          Activity Resource

          Activity Duration

          Schedule

          Activity Costs

          Budget

          Human Resource Plan

          Gwilym smiled and shook his head. “Fourteen elements to planning a project! And I still think we’re missing some things. What else can you think of, Fred?”

          “It would be nice to plan th’bad things that seem to happen on every project, th’things that always seem to go wrong.”

          “I’m not sure if that’s possible, but it bears thinking about. What about the stakeholders? We identified them early and came up with a list of them. What are we going to do about them? How are we going to tell them about the project?”

          “I like these matrixes. Why don’t I create one for this, too.”

          Fred listed the stakeholders of this project on the x axis and the different communications on the y axis. Project plan, Calendar, Schedule, Budget. “What else, Gwilym?”

          “We should have regular meetings with the team to see how things are going. Call them Status Meetings. We should put out Progress Reports for people like Sir Kay to see. He’ll also want reporting on budget.”

	Sir Kay	King Arthur	Euros	Mostyn.	Nantlais	Merlin	Tollemache	Project Team	Quarry	Sawmill	Fred’s Project Notebook
Project Plan	I	I					I	I	I	I	W
Charter	I	I					I	I			W
Status Reports							W	W	W	W	W
Status Meeting Minutes							W	W	W	W	W
Budget	Q	Q	Q								Q
Calendar							D	D	W	W	M
Requirements	I	I		I	I	I	I	I	I	I	I
Progress Reports	Q						W	W			W
Issue/Problem Log	Q						W	W			W
Contracts	I		I				I		I	I	I

           

          Fred and Gwilym decided how often people would get information and placed notes at the intersection in the matrix. I for as issued, W for weekly, M for monthly, Q for Quarterly.

          Fred added the Communications Plan to his Project Management Plan book and Gwilym followed the plan for all their project information.

Sixty-first excerpt from 'Twelve Towers'

          “We need to see when we need how many people,” said Fred.

          “I agree. Let’s display how many we need based on the network diagram. Now we need lots of laborers for the demolition. Tomorrow we can still use some laborers to demolish the rest of the palace but we need foundation men to start digging out the foundation hole. Also we need Sawyers to be getting the right amount of wood for the tower and a Quarryman to decide how much extra stone we need and obtain that for us.”

          Fred had created a chart that was titled, ‘Laborers,’ and had written ‘Number’ on the y axis and ‘Day’ on the x axis. He placed marks indicating 1 through 12 on the y axis and was filling in ten units for how many men they were using on the first day. “How many laborers will we need tomorrow?”

          “I think some of the men acting as laborers today are really sawyers and foundation men so they will be coming off to do their jobs. But we could use as many as we could get to tear down the palace.”

          “But demolishin’ th’rest of th’palace is not on th’critical path, Gwilym.” Fred pointed this out on the network diagram.

          “You’re right, Fred! Why don’t we leave that work for filler work when our men are waiting around for something to do? That way they can focus on the critical path. What are you doing?”

          “I’m seeing how many we need of each type of people each day so tha can see when tha need to send extras home and when tha need to bring more on board.”

          “I like it!” exclaimed Gwilym. “Let’s fill it out.” They each took sheets of paper, titled with the various skill-sets and, using the network diagram and the calendar as a guide, filled out the resource requirements in what Gwilym called the resource histograms.

          They noticed two things:

          First, there were times that there was a greater need for a particular resource than they had. They indicated this by drawing a horizontal capacity line at the number of men they had on their crew with a particular skill. They chose not to do this on the laborer skill-set since they could add people there from other skills when they were not working.

          Second, there were occasions when the need for a particular skill was far lower than the number of people they had with that skill. “These will be times of furlough,” said Gwilym. “The men wanted warnings of when they would be furloughed so that they can tend to their farms. This will work for that.”

          “But what about times like these,” pointed out Fred, “when we have not enough carpenters?”

          “First we have to see which activities put that demand on. If they are on the critical path, we can’t delay them but there may be some demand coming from activities off the critical path. If that is the cause, we can delay those activities and see what that does to the schedule.”

          The two of them worked through that example and were able to put off some work which delayed another path of the plan and solved the carpenter resource problem. But now limited mason time caused another resource constraint. Plus it caused them to have to redo all the resource histograms; a lengthy and complicated process.

          “Let’s see how the men are doing while we think about a better way to handle this problem,” suggested Gwilym.

To read the entire first draft in one shot, click here: