Introduction
As of this writing, the published completion date of a current construction project has not been modified, even though it has no credibility. Although that date is only 6 weeks away, the design is incomplete and critical equipment has not been delivered. At present, pipe is being erected and supported by a spider's web of steel cables, because the supporting steel is not fully designed. There is no possibility of an outcome matching the published schedule, but that date has not been changed because of the politics involved.
As illustrated, then, a project schedule is a model of future events culminating in a desired outcome. However, when a schedule is enmeshed in project politics, its value in every dimension suffers. This paper explores problems caused by the relationships between project schedules and project politics. The author also provides examples and proposes some frequently applicable solutions.
The project schedule is part of, and often the primary visible expression of, project planning. A project schedule is the means of conveying the prediction of time-related project outcomes. As such, the schedule should provide a benchmark against which ongoing progress can be judged. Then, using this benchmark, revised plans can be formulated so the project meets its objectives.
“Politics” in this context refers to group dynamics on the project. “Politics” generally implies destructive behaviors that damage the prospects of a successful project conclusion. Project politics usually indicate that ignorance or hidden agendas take precedence over the project's purpose. Most often, those acting out of ignorance are not fully aware of the impact of their posturing. Likewise, those pursuing private agendas are generally not conscious of their real impact on the project. When many, or key, individuals are acting out of ignorance or pursuing such agendas, the cumulative impact on the project can be devastating.
Making the Schedule Successful
A successful project schedule requires stakeholder alignment around such questions as:
- What are the results sought from this project?
- What scope of accomplishment is necessary to achieve the results?
- What are the relative priorities of performance metrics, such as cost and schedule, in driving the project?
- What is the purpose we hope to accomplish by this schedule?
Answering these questions satisfactorily requires either an omniscient project leader or effective communication among the stakeholders. Because omniscience is in short supply, we are left with the need for effective communication. This leads naturally to the need for a project culture where problems surface and are discussed and solutions are reached collaboratively. Otherwise, a project has command and control structures imposed from the top down, which are far more likely to cause, not solve, political discord.
Obviously, then, the primary cure for the negative impact of politics on project schedules is the disinfectant of communication sunshine.
A key secondary step towards curing negative politics is to reflect the light of communication into all facets of the project. For instance, clear scheduling procedures and operational definitions can be shared with everyone. If such procedures and definitions exist, are understood, and are observed, all project participants are on notice that political games will be brought into the open.
When a Schedule is Successful
Bringing essential communication about a schedule to each team player is most likely to yield successful outcomes when:
- Stakeholders approach the scheduling activities with a dedication to putting the interests of the project above narrower interests
- Schedules are arrived at through the interaction of the widest possible range of project stakeholders
- Scheduling meetings are effective and interactive. They involve the free flow of information and opinions
One by one, each of these needs is addressed below. Understanding these important guidelines is vital, since each of them is often overwhelmed by project politics. When that happens, the value of the resulting schedule suffers. Let's take a look:
Putting the Project Interests First
Any time that stakeholders are consulted, one runs the risk that some of them will look to a narrow perceived interest at the expense of others. This tendency can be countered through the selection process for project participants and through assuring that the contractual arrangements between them are appropriate. Increasingly, such methods are recognized as ways to reduce conflict and increase the reliability of outcomes.
Some examples of this can be found in the efforts of the Performance Based Studies Research Group at Arizona State University (www.pbsrg.com) and at the Lean Construction Institute website (www.leanconstruction.org).
Still, these methods are not available to the project manager in all cases. Corporate or governmental requirements may mandate relationships that do not encourage a pooled interest in the outcome. In such cases, the project manager is faced with the necessity of building recognition of a community of interest. Such a community may still be built on horse trading between the stakeholders, as they try to optimize outcomes more narrowly than on a projectwide basis.
For examples, on a project known to the author, the efforts of one subcontractor to involve others in managing the efficient flow of work resulted in a more successful outcome, even though the general contractor/construction manager (GC/CM) initially refused to join the discussion. This outcome was possible because local optimization (cooperation between subcontractors) resulted in cost reductions for each of them. A more specific example is often found in space coordination in buildings. Failure to coordinate between trades results in additional costs for dealing with conflicts and rework. If each trade's work is treated independently, the result often suggests an Oklahoma land war, with each trade trying to get control of the space first. Contractual requirements about the responsibility to coordinate will not themselves cure this problem.
Wide Involvement
A friend postulated that the difficulty of getting a project team moving in minimal synchronization toward a goal rises as an exponential curve. He retired from project management still attempting to accumulate sufficient data to determine the range of the exponent. His personal experience suggested that, broadly, the range was between the square and the cube of the number of interests involved. Using that range suggests that aligning the interests of four participants is between 16 and 64 times as hard as running the project through a dictatorship.
Examining the history of project management, we find examples where the role of a project manager is glorified on the basis of his force of personality and great accomplishments. Whether the example is Frank Crowe and Hoover Dam or General Leslie Groves and the Pentagon (or the Manhattan project), it is easy to use this model as justification that schedules are the result of “leadership” instead of collaboration.
Although Groves and Crowe were both irascible individuals, they ultimately accomplished their objectives with teams of people, instead of acting alone. Clear leadership is needed, and a leader's priorities sometimes must overrule individual stakeholder preferences, but schedule success follows from involving, not suppressing, stakeholders.
For example, on a recent project, a very complex remodel of a research hospital laboratory building was undertaken with typical contractual relationships. Major portions of the work were subcontracted to specialists on a lump-sum basis. Each subcontractor was asked to quote on the work based on a schedule that had been prepared through consultation among the owner, the architect/engineer, and the GC/CM. It would have been very easy for the GC/CM to suppress further development of the schedule on the grounds that it would be too messy. However, recognizing the risks involved in this project, the GC/CM initiated a series of meetings to refine the schedule. Initially, some of the subcontractors had resisted the idea of revising the schedule from which they had bid the project. Ultimately, though, effective interaction resulted in a highly successful project. After a number of messy meetings, changes to the schedule were effected that translated into a better project for all stakeholders. Conflict on the project during actual construction was minimal.
Effective Meetings
Our scheduling meetings are an opportunity to tune the schedule to the advantage of the project. The desired outcome of positive influence is thwarted when the meetings are ineffective. Although it takes an effective meeting to be better than no meeting, that is not a justification for having no meetings. It is a demand for having effective meetings.
Russell Ackoff, an operations and quality expert, tells the story of suggesting an approach to gaining consensus in a business strategy session. The company chairman invited each vice president to present a summary of what he thought would be a better course of action than the current strategy. Several presentations were made, and several strategies were suggested. The president found the experience frustrating. “Ackoff,” he asked, “What am I supposed to do now? You told me we were seeking strategy consensus, but instead we have fractionated into many different strategies.” Ackoff's response was interesting. He maintained, “You have consensus. If you ask the group, I suggest that you will get universal agreement that any of these strategies is better than the current one, so you have a consensus for ‘change’ to the current strategy. All that is needed now is to bring these ideas together into a single model of the future.”
As in Ackoff's story, each of the stakeholders in our projects is likely to have personal ideas about how to improve the schedule. If these ideas are effectively brought together into a coherent model, the result is likely to be a much better schedule than the preliminary one was.
Of course, the challenge for the project manager is how to make that happen. Making meetings effective is a key ingredient for that success.
For example, on the project that was given as an example in the preceding section, the first meetings were chaotic. The first full-scale discussion of the project schedule involved 50 people, a full-day meeting, and continued posturing for perceived advantage on the part of some stakeholders. Still, a better schedule resulted. Egos were assuaged. Narrow interests were surrendered in favor of group goals that were established in such a way as to improve the outcome for all stakeholders. Some stakeholders may not have gotten everything that would have been to their advantage, but the group gained greatly while giving every participant an improved outcome. By the later stages of the project, the frequency and length of meetings was significantly reduced, since the stakeholders were able to act in the full belief that their interests were being protected.
Manifestations of Politics in Schedules
The manifestations of the rise of politics in projects are many. Below we will explore six manifestations as evidence of dangerous politics in our projects. They are:
- The myth of independence
- Position power
- Bowing before the most vocal advocate
- Expert power
- Decision paralysis
- Setting project durations
The Myth of Independence
The myth of independence is that the actions of project stakeholders do not affect anyone else. In a ridiculous example, a general contractor was heard to demand that the roofing subcontractor begin immediately to put the roof on a building in accordance with the schedule at a time when the roof structure was not yet erected. Other examples of this arise when project delivery dates are missed, but somehow that is not allowed to excuse nonperformance of succeeding activities. Politics based on this myth make the project schedule look like a fraud. The cure is found in two realizations:
- That interactions must be understood, explored, and documented.
- That the schedule must be updated to reflect current reality. This is a precursor to developing a revised schedule that plots a path from this point forward.
An example of this was seen in a recent schedule calling for work to be done in a northern climate that required both nonfreezing weather and release of the system by the owner. The contractor was then pestered for weeks about his failure to start the activity during freezing weather and before the owner was prepared to release the system.
Position Power
Position power is one of the forms of power explored by Blaine Lee in the book The Power Principle (1998). The concept is that we defer to those with a title and do not question their edicts because the boss is never wrong. This wrong-headed approach frequently gets projects in trouble through failure to recognize necessary schedule changes until corrective action is no longer possible. Instead, having acted on the decree that we would ignore deviations from the schedule, we now have the impossible job of overcoming the lack of action mandated by those in power. The counter for this comes from building a team relationship where power is not accorded to anyone based solely on position.
Vocal Advocates
Bowing before the most vocal advocate can mean deferring to the loudest, the most articulate, or the one with the best access to the ear of the project manager. Loud is not logic. It is, however, often a weapon. The ability to articulate or explain the difficulties in meeting previous commitments should not be accepted as an excuse for non performance. Still, it is often a successful tactic, as when the engineers excuse themselves for failure to finish their work in a timely fashion. They are usually better able to articulate the reasons for this delay than is the small player whose access to the project leaders is limited.
Expertise
Expert power comes into play when stakeholders uses their superior knowledge to buffalo others into not questioning their position. This is a classic defensive maneuver, and the best defense is probing questions. If the expertise is real, then the person with the problem should be able to propose a solution, not just hide behind superior knowledge. Specialists often use this expertise as a weapon, because they are confident they will not be challenged. In one example where the tables were turned, the author watched a specialty contractor submit, and subsequently withdraw, multiple claims for the cost of others’ interference with his work. Clearly he was counting on lack of understanding of his expertise to ease the acceptance of his claims. A scheduler working for the general contractor, who had retired from the trade involved, successfully matched his own expertise against the assertions in the claim.
Decision Paralysis
What I term analysis paralysis occurs when timely decisions are not made, often for political reasons. My father explained to me that critical path method scheduling had been tried and abandoned in his government department because the answer to what was delaying projects always seemed to reduce to one of delay in making decisions. Because this was a politically unacceptable answer, the messenger was “killed.” In a counter example, I once took 3 weeks out of many chains of procurement activities in a schedule. I found that the duration (typically 4 weeks) for issuing a purchase order was set because the engineer lacked faith in the owner's ability to make decisions in just 1 week. Therefore, 3 additional weeks were inserted into each procurement item to protect the owner's ego. In perhaps 100 purchase decisions submitted to the owner for action, only 2 were not decided on within 1 week. One of those was an equipment purchase decision covering about 20% of the entire budget. I believe the owner can be forgiven for taking 2 weeks on that decision. What could not be forgiven was adding 3 weeks of pad to every decision separately.
Setting Project Durations
Setting project activity durations in a schedule is often a political act. It is destructive to the extent that durations are established on a political basis, rather than by the resources required and their projected consumption at a reasonable rate. Determining durations on an inconsistent basis brings incongruous results. For instance, the question must be asked: does an activity really require 30 days to complete, or is it actually a 1-day activity that just won't start for 29 days?
Conclusion
We can sum up the politics of schedules with a simple observation: schedules have their greatest value when they are used with integrity. The widespread insertion of negative “politics” into schedules destroys that integrity. A project manager has the obligation to protect his schedule and project by using the light of clear communication, tools such as the five “whys,” and consistent application of methodology to drive “politics” out of scheduling.