Have you been chasing your tail generating schedules?

Abstract

Since 1999 a Project Management Office (PMO) has been operating at Freescale Semiconductor Israel (FIL).

Developing a new chip is a very complex task; a typical FIL development project combines simultaneous work by dozens of engineers of various disciplines, lasts more than a year, and comprises more than a thousand tasks. Several such projects are done simultaneously and create a real management challenge.

To support these projects FIL's PMO has successfully implemented a project management methodology. This methodology addresses four aspects involved in planning and control of the project: scope, methods used to develop the product, resources, and schedule development.

This paper describes the various methodology stages that cover the aforementioned aspects. Each stage will be discussed as well as practical methods and tools to ensure its effective completion

Planning and Control Introduction

In order to effectively manage complex design projects, a comprehensive planning and control process should be imposed. The process is driven by the program manager and involves all project members: Project manager, team leaders and team members.

The planning phase includes four parallel sub-processes (Error! Reference source not found.): scope definition, definition of the product development methodology, resource planning, and development of a schedule/work plan. To create a comprehensive and reliable project plan the aforementioned sub-processes should progress simultaneously.

The following deliverables are products of the planning process: base work plan with delivery date commitments, a product development methodology template and a Resource Breakdown Structure.

Planning Phase Sub-Processes:

• The scope definition sub-process defines project contents and goals. Project team responsibilities and required external team receivables necessary for project execution are outlined. The maturity level of the scope definition determines the credibility of the project plan.
• The work flow definition - the product development methodology, i.e. a detailed WBS and an activity network, is defined and reviewed by the project core team. This yields agreed upon uniform work flow templates to be used later in the detailed project plan. At this stage reuse of previous project methodologies is more efficient.
• Resource planning starts by naming the project's core team. Afterwards a Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS) is defined and approved and decisions are taken regarding project staffing for the various skill disciplines. The RBS must be balanced in terms of the number of teams and engineers reporting to each team leader, required skills and experience levels.
• Development of a schedule/work plan integrates the previously noted sub-processes into a comprehensive and detailed schedule. The schedule considers external receivables commitments, agreed upon development methodology as well as approved resources. This is an iterative process that involves tradeoff analyses between project scope, development methodology, available resources and schedule constraints.

The Control process starts as soon as a first plan is in place. There is no clear separation between the planning and control phases, since planning is an ongoing process that continues till project closure. The control phase includes two recurrent cycles - monthly plan review and weekly status review. The planning and control process will be detailed below.

Exhibit 1 - Planning Process Diagram

Creating a High-Level Plan

Every experienced project manager has experienced that chaos evolves rapidly, shortly after the project's opening shot. People moving to different directions sometimes ‘hitting' each other, a lot of viable information is spreading without proper control. Actual work starts and dozens of technical decisions need to be taken. Some resources are already available and progress is expected to be seen from day one. Critical questions at stake are amplified by senior management: Are we doing the right things in the right way? Are we properly staffed to meet commitment?

The High Level (HL) Planning phase aims at addressing these questions. It effectively organizes the project and establishes solid foundations for the Detailed Planning phase. Combined with the “first step plan” methodology described below, it ensures that initial work is done in the right direction as well. Two steps should precede HL planning:

• Core team establishment - the core team includes technical leaders in every discipline that participates in the project. The right composition of the core team has a strong impact on project stability and quality. Project disciplines managed by senior managers have a naturally higher focus than those led by junior leaders or by no leaders at all. A responsibility matrix table can be an appropriate tool to ensure that all disciplines are covered properly.
• Preliminary scope definition – an iterative step done by both the project manager and the core team in which project receivables and deliverables are defined, in consultation with senior management and partners. Both product and project scope should be preliminary defined. It is highly recommended that a core team member gets full ownership for the communication with each of the external suppliers. This creates a single point of contact for each external partner and hence improves communication and cooperation. The result of this step is a preliminary list of receivables and deliverables with an internal owner assigned for each supplier on the list.

Now that the appropriate resources (core team) and scope definition are ready, the following three steps are performed simultaneously:

• High level planning - highest level of Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is created. This is a list of high-level activities. In addition, every external receivable/deliverable gets a WBS line item. This ensures that no area was omitted from the HL plan. The HL activities are categorized by criteria (e.g. high, mid and low complexity subsystem). A generic work flow template including effort estimates is generated for each category. A chart describing HL resource requirements vs. time is created using the templates and the HL WBS (Exhibit 2). This chart is the basis for the preliminary resource demand and tradeoff analysis. It is used until a detailed plan is in place.
  

  Exhibit 2 – Resource Requirement Chart

• Team leaders' appointment - The HL activities are divided between team leaders in a balanced way. Things to be considered: team leaders experience, activity technical complexity, total effort expected for the activity, potential risks. An “acceptance process” whereby nominated team leaders give feedback about their ability to perform their assigned activities with allocated resources is recommended. The detailed planning described in the next section is mainly owned by the nominated team leaders.
• Definition/adoption of work flow - The major outcome of this step is the documentation of detailed sub-system work flow templates that will be later used as ‘building blocks' in the detailed planning phase. These templates describe specific methodology flows used in the project. Another outcome is the re-evaluation of the HL plan – ‘deep diving' into details always reveals unexpected issues. In this step intensive meetings with representatives from all project disciplines are held. During these meetings the workflow templates are defined in Gantt/ Pert charts form.

When the workflow templates are ready, a review takes place. All team leaders must participate in this review. The review objectives are: review the work flow and modify it if required, align all team leaders with uniform and acceptable work flow, define uniform terminology, communication, and control. This review is vital to help meeting project's goals.

First step plan

Planning large and complex projects requires great effort from the project manager and team leaders, and is time consuming. Planning such projects can take several weeks or even months. The problem is that staffing occurs concurrently; new team members join the project and need to be managed and engaged with project activities. Team members cannot wait until planning ends, and valuable time might be wasted if they are not focused from the very beginning on the project objectives. A new, first step plan approach, intends to address those issues.

The steps of the first step plan are:

• The project manager and team leaders identify the coming high-level project milestone, derived from the project deliverables.
• A detailed short-term work plan is generated for all the present team members.
• A control process, detailed below, begins.

The first step plan enables the project core team to concentrate on building the overall project plan while the rest of the team starts executing part of the overall project plan. When an HL plan, HL Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS) and detailed agreed upon work flow templates are in place, detailed planning can start.

From High-Level to Detailed Plan

Once the First Step Plan has been put in place and team members start to work on their first tasks, the core team is available to further detail the plan. At this point an initial budget, namely resource amount, should be allocated to the project. In addition, two important steps should be closed from the Scope Definition perspective: Product Feature Freeze and Receivable Date Commitments.

• Product Feature Freeze – a well defined list of the product features (i.e. final scope) should be finalized in order to truly evaluate the size and complexity of the project. An unstable scope implies an unstable plan and will probably result in unnecessary rework.
• Receivable Date Commitments – a detailed list of receivables and date commitments from each supplier. Supplier can be external vendor, external contractor or other organizational team.

A Detailed Plan with Generic Resources is now defined. Each high-level activity is detailed using (where available) the predefined flow templates. Generic effort estimations derived from templates should be refined. In general activity durations should last between one to three weeks. Although no specific resource names are assigned at this stage, the total number of resources, used at any given point in time, should not exceed the budgeted resource amount. If required, resource levelling should be applied.

The detailed plan is reviewed by the Project Manager, The Program Manager and the core team. The purpose of the review is to validate the assumptions existing in the plan; identify resource mismatches and agree upon commitment dates. A sub-result of the plan review is a baseline resource request for the entire project - this is actually a resource histogram that describes the resource request per skill (see Exhibit 2). At this point there could be an iterative trade-off analysis to reach an accepted combination of scope, resources/budget and schedule.

When final budget is approved, the project team can be fully staffed per a predefined and agreed project Resource chart.

The baseline plan is frozen and presented to the entire project team. That includes:

• Up-to-date work plan and commitment dates
• Approved Resource Breakdown Structure
• Agreed work flow template
• Status and technical reports that will be used to monitor the project progress.

The entire team should commit to the plan and outstanding issues should be resolved.

Controlling Phase

The control process begins shortly after the planning phase starts, continues in parallel with it and lasts until the end of the project. It includes two recurrent cycles – a short-term status update cycle and a plan update cycle. These control cycles complement each other and ensure that all project activities progress according to plan.

As a project progresses, plan changes may be driven by varied planning sub-processes:

• Scope updates – due to change requests;
• Work flow updates – due to new tools, better understanding of the work flow, process improvements;
• Resources requirements update.

As part of the control process, all these changes should be reflected in the project plan and affect the team members' individual plans.

The short-term status update cycle (Exhibit 3) is held on a weekly basis. The objective of this cycle is to update project activities' last week progress. All team members update their weekly progress by reporting both actual invested task efforts as well as estimated time to complete the tasks. These reports, approved by the team leaders, are retrieved into the master project plan. The up-to-date plan can now be analyzed with standard Project Management methods, such as Critical Path analysis, milestones status, resources load, etc.

Exhibit 3 - Short-Term Status Update Cycle

The plan update cycle (Exhibit) is held on a monthly or bi-monthly basis for each project team. Its main objective is to extend team members' detailed plan (derived from the project overall plan) by an additional two to three months. The plan update cycle is a communication and acceptance process, important for aligning individual plans with the project goals and priorities. The cycle is comprised of two parts:

• Plan review – attended by the project manager, the relevant team leader and the program manager. The review is designated to check the actual progress of each team member vs. the short term plan issued in the previous review, and review the team members' plans for the near future. These short term plans are part of the overall project plan and reflect any changes that have occurred in the plan. The changes could stem from updated receivable dates, delayed activities or change requests.
• Plan presentation - attended by the project manager, the relevant team leader, the program manager, and the team member. The objectives of the presentation are to present the individual plans for the near future and receive a commitment from the team member to this plan. Another benefit is to demonstrate a full commitment from both the management team and the team members to the planning and control processes as a major managerial procedure of the project.

  The following topics are covered:

  • Actual progress against previous short term plan. Lessons can be learned for future planning of similar activities. Personal accountability is also demonstrated.
  • Individual short term plans for the near future.
  • Clear activity content and completion criteria.
  • Acceptance and commitment of the plans by the team members.

Exhibit 3 - Plan Update Cycle

Conclusions

Generating effective and tight schedules for dynamic and complex projects is sometimes viewed as an impossible mission. Sayings like: “Let's stop wasting time and start working”, and “There is no way to track it since it keeps changing all the time” are inherent in such projects. Bypassing these obstacles and others, using the practical well structured project planning and control methodology presented above, has been successfully proved in many projects. Following are lessons learned and recommendations:

• An effective planning process is very long and it usually overlaps real project work already being executed. Therefore a ‘fast start' tracking procedure should be implemented parallel to the planning phase to monitor the project work already in progress and prioritize it promptly. Using the combination of high level and first step planning steps, as project begins, can resolve the inherent planning/start working conflict and put the project on track.
• Planning and control take quite some time in complex projects and are often perceived as annoying overhead. People won't follow you unless they feel you know where you are going. Using a structured planning and control methodology visible to all is a good way to gain commitment to the planning process.
• The definition and acceptance of detailed methodology flow templates are main foundations of the planning and control processes:
  • Combined with the high level plan they accelerate the detailed plan construction tremendously.
  • They enforce uniform workflow and terminology which is a necessary condition for an effective control process.
• The reliability of the schedule strongly depends on the maturity of the project's scope, resources, and work flow definition. This should be communicated to upper management.
• Reliable detailed schedule must rely on detailed analysis of the three project aspects: scope, resources and work flow. Many details do not necessarily imply a high quality and reliable plan.
• The recurrent plan update cycle during the control phase is essential to effectively manage the project. It demonstrates managerial commitment to the plan and creates accountability of the entire project team. It also contributes significantly to early problem identification and proactive actions to address them.