Introduction
Read the signs of disaster as a hunter reads signs of game! Know where to look for indicators. Learn how these signs manifest in the noise of project progress. Be able to calculate how long before an impending train wreck. Respond to catching the project before it “leaves the tracks.” We will discuss more than forty indicators, gleaned from four decades of project delivery; recognize these indicators in your projects. Develop responses to each of the indicators or the “flashing yellow lights.” Learn to tell the difference between false noise and real danger. Hear the bells, whistles, and lights of warning unique to each component of the project system: inputs, process, outputs, controls, teams, resources, methods, management, and leadership. Use project imperatives: results, scope, performance, and risk to develop the response.
There are no epiphanies; the heavens do not open; angels do not descend; nor do trumpets sound to warn of trouble. There is revelation … stop, look, listen, and verify. Be in the project, walk the project, be one with the project to sense, hear, smell, detect the indicators of trouble, then recognize there is trouble and react before trouble overwhelms the project.
Plan and document, plan and document, plan and document. Can you judge (1) if progress is slow; or (2) if it is due to slow work, too much work, not enough information, not enough guidance, no presence, no progress feedback, or bad conditions? Learn to recognize the indicators; diagnose indicators for the cause of the alarm; plan responses, disregard false alarms and, above all be vigilent, be awake, be alert, be one with the project!
Fifty Words
Sense indicators that your project is about to “leave the tracks” or is already crashing. Respond to this warning! Catch your project and put it back on track. Hear the forty signs of actual trouble. Differentiate false noise from real danger. Stomp out fires before they blaze! Prevent project fires! Stay on track!
What this Paper Will Outline
- How to detect the alarms that are unique to the project methodology: create the concept, define results, establish scope, plan requirements, estimate effort and cost, schedule performance, procure resources, execute activities, control results—close, celebrate, and learn!.
- How to find ways to control the amplitude of variation in progress. Use the imperatives of projects—results, scope, performance, and risk—to develop the response and to prevent trouble.
- How to prevent fires by planning the plan, planning and estimating, then planning and scheduling, verifying everything again, weekly community planning, measuring progress, and then controlling to ensure the right delivery.
Indicators of Disaster
Note: The indicators are italicized and bolded. Many items below describe specific scenarios where the indicators are exemplified. These are italicized
One: Create the concept and recognize opportunity: vision, idea, pain, problem, and need
Who is the customer and what are they buying?
Immovable end dates.
We worked on three theatres (two amphitheaters and a Broadway) with contracted opening dates. If backward planning is not done, you have a problem.
Knowing real end dates is also necessary. An overpass had to be ready for dedication by the governor; the deadline imposed, that would cost both in quality and expense to meet, was a month before necessary.
Being able to explain the proposed result of a project is important. If you cannot explain the result in 90 seconds, remember “to send a man to the moon and return him safely within the decade?” This is a one-sentence example of how to explain a project’s result quickly.
A contractor was doing a job for a transmission manufacturer where the contractor refused to let the company start installation of some equipment in an area where they were working, because it wasn’t on their schedule. The end result was that the contractor finished the job on their schedule date, but the production line could have started up weeks earlier than it did, at a small cost to the contractor’s work, because they wouldn’t share the space. This is a good example of not paying attention to the customer.
Two: Define Results and Success Criteria
Passive client/ customer
A pharmaceutical company used to brag that they made every scientist sign off on his or her lab facility before it was built. They built models, used renderings, but required a sign-off. At the same time, the contractor was experiencing 30% increases in the cost of lab work due to changes after the construction was done per the plans and specs. The scientists would come in and demand wholesale changes after the work had been completed.
In the 777 plant, Boeing delegated management of the plant to an individual who never figured out which direction the building was being built in. He had all the mechanical contractors working north to south and the steel erector working south to north. The outcome was high claims by many of the contractors. Boeing announced that because of the poor performance of the contracting community in Seattle, they might not build their next major plant there. The contractors’ general attitude was “good riddance.”
The client lets someone else totally represent them or does not speak up. A client, who is not engaged in the process, is distracted, not interested, not pushing, consequently, there is a problem; you learn this early on. This means decisions will lag, the project team will lose attention, attention to detail will slip, and there is no sense of urgency. Usually, this leads to a customer coming back and saying, “That’s not what I wanted!”
A contractor in Colorado does what they call a ONE-day schematic. They make the client commit to giving them full attention for one day. At the end of that day, they have elevation sketches, floor plans, room finish schedules, and a +/− 5% estimate, and this is at the proposal stage. They don’t lose many jobs in which the owner agrees to do this. On the other hand, they get enough work using this method that they don’t worry about losing a few projects in which the owner won’t give them the time.
Project drivers are unclear
On a pharmaceutical project, the contractor made the owner specify the project driver as the schedule. Therefore, decisions were optimized based on schedule impact. Eventually, the effect of this became a little clearer when it was learned what the time tradeoff was. The contractor could put a monetary value on schedule tradeoffs, which led to very clear and quick decision making.
Contra Story: A project manager had a power plant rebuilt that was mandated at 60 days. They spent millions of dollars ($30 million) chasing, and missing, a 60-day completion goal. After the fact, they agreed that the tradeoff was less than they had spent. Worst case scenario: A 120-day schedule would have cost, at most, $10 million in lost power revenue or replacement power cost. Some compromise would have yielded a 90-day schedule at a savings of perhaps $25 million.
Late start
Late decision to start the project: If the project team does not have sufficient time, you have a problem. Remember that immovable end date. Managers love this game. There is no money to do the project, but when there is, it needs to be done in 25% of the original time.
One company stopped and started developing a product three times before they killed it for being too late.
Three: Establish the Scope
Great work breakdown structure.
A great work breakdown structure (WBS) is a positive indicator as it is a logical listing of the work required delivering the result. Many times, we only see this as part of a schedule. For the WBS to be complete, we need to see a list of what is not in the WBS and a list of things we wish were in the scope. Suggest a maximum size in effort and in duration for all activities. A singular scope is not realistic
Remember that the WBS is not the sequence in which work is completed. There still needs to be a schedule based on the way work is accomplished that is different from how it is broken down.
No contingencies or the contingency is not well defined.
I have learned that a 10% contingency does not cover all the unknowns; the knowns are assigned potential estimates. Even with good scope, if it is a truly one-of-a-kind project, the contingency needs to be 20% in money, time, and effort. This says that the planning has identified 80% of the scope, and without good scope, the contingency may reach 100%.
Big Dig in Boston: Among the items eliminated to keep the apparent budget down were contingencies, costs for eminent domain acquisitions, poor soil conditions, and changes as a result of public hearings.
Contingency is not managed.
During the Pan Am Games, we knew we would have problems that we could not predict. We created a problem resolution center to fix the problems. This is an example of implementing a contingency plan for the unknown unknowns.
If the contingency is not reassessed at every progress meeting and adjusted up or down, or if changes are not coming out of the contingency, be on guard. If management takes away the contingency, you are in trouble before you start.
You need contingency control rules. I have seen projects in which many different parties spent the contingency; there was no coordination or discussion. The contingency was treated as everybody’s route to an open checkbook.
Problem resolution processes are critical.
Very often in project work, the cost of delay in making a go-forward decision is more expensive than the cost of any possible solution arrived at quickly. There is a need to clarify the difference between contingency in a budget/schedule sense and in a planning (provision for the unknown) sense; they are closely related but need to be treated distinctly.
Too much money in the budget.
We create incredible solutions because we are too rich. M-16 versus AK-47 or a pencil versus a write-upside-down-pressurized-pen or a $250,000 paint booth rather than a hair dryer. This is how I see developers waste their budgets.
You will not believe this, but too much money makes people lethargic. People are not as vigilant when someone says: “We have money for that”.
Inadequate budget.
We never have enough money, but when there is too little money (remember contingency), the project may not be viable. This is usually accompanied by an unwillingness to cut scope or not knowing what scope can be reduced.
Intentional strategies of too little budget money are very dangerous. We can do this for “x%” of historical numbers. The idea seems to be that squeezing the money will cause people to be more careful in spending it. In reality, it has many other impacts: (1) refusal to make decisions; (2) games about blaming others; (3) accountability for pennies while mega dollars flow out uncontrolled; and (4) defensible narrow cost decisions that negatively impact the larger project.
Scope has the potential of doubling.
We decided on a subcontractor based on a small monetary difference and confidence that electrician could do a $500,000 job. The job grew to be a $1 million job and the contractor was totally overwhelmed. The growth of the job totally favored the scheme of the electricians union to slow the job down. When the contractor lost control of his project because it was doubled in scope and size and this allowed union radicals assisted costs double again.
Resources and controls must be scalable
Hand waving over scope—people really do not pay attention to the scope of the project.
At the original number, the owner was anxious to get underway. We had a (mid-August) meeting about early decision items. The project team suggested starting running the air steam and water lines from other parts of the property immediately. The owner said they don’t know whether the water line would be a 6- or an 8-inch line. And, I said, fire protection requirements alone will dictate at least an 8-inch, so the question is: should it be an 8- or a 10-inch line? The cost difference is trivial. The value to the project of getting the excavation out of the way now, in the summer, rather than later when the site is congested and the weather is a bigger factor, justified the additional cost. In late October, we were cleared for a 10-inch line. By that point, an 18-inch line run in August would have been cheaper than the 10-inch line.
To speed the project along, the owner committed to the steel fabricator for the shop-time window to produce 2000 tons of fabrication. The details were to follow. The contractor had her engineers do a 4-hour study and she concluded that it would be more like 3000 tons and advised the client to enlarge the window. When the steel was released for fabrication (3 months later), the fabricator came back and said if you pay us lots of extra for overtime, and you accept delay in some of the steel for a few weeks, we can fabricate the steel. Because the window was only for 2000 tons and the takeoff is now close to 3000, we just don’t have the shop-time available. The big additional expenses and project delay were the results of refusal to deal with scope.
Not just that the scope is unclear, but refusal to deal with that lack of clarity, and refusal to admit how big the job is indicates trouble. Failure to make contingent plans and recognizing the necessity of moving ahead has consequences.
Four Plan Requirements
“We do not have time to plan; we have to get started.”
I do not know how many times I have heard this one. Once you start the project, the project team becomes a team of firefighters. Planning is the one activity that dramatically increases the quality of a project. People do not know how much time should be spent planning. We say that for every hour spent in planning six hours are saved in the execution. One trick that works is to use 10% of the duration to plan. If you look at the project process, most of it is planning. The phases are not equal in time. For some reason, people want planning to be proportional to the effort and do not understand how 120 hours of planning may get 90% of the effort out of the project.
One statement we hear all the time is, “The owner wanted me to start so I didn’t have time to plan.” I tell them, I will excuse your being inefficient for the first two weeks. What are you doing to make sure the third week will be performed efficiently? Usually a job that starts out with too little commitment to planning never recovers.
“I cannot plan the work until I know when it is scheduled”
When asked for a lesson plan governing significant individual training, the responsible company commander replied: “I cannot plan the training until I know when it is scheduled.”
You can plan at any time and in any place. People do not like to plan because they have to deal with ambiguity and unknowns. People do not like making assumptions that may not stand up and they do not like to plan repeatedly without any action. People also have a hard time seeing any project from the big picture down to the tools and tasks of the actual work.
This can be a defensive behavior used to excuse a task the manager finds difficult or distasteful. It’s kind of a "if you don’t have the answers you can't bring any more questions” approach. We can't see the end from the beginning but that is not a reason to fail to look toward the future.
Plan the plan
Taking short cuts or skipping steps
Beware any time people are taking short cuts or skipping steps. This is one I failed to recognize. An architect made it clear that he was trying to save costs by skirting the building code by only making new construction comply during a renovation but not the existing reused areas. This should have been a huge flag to develop costs for the possibility that the entire structure would be required to comply with the current building code
Any time someone says they are cutting corners, assess the risk, and include a contingency.
“Trust us”
“Trust us, we have 45 years of experience.” When asked how they were going to do a project in seven days that other people took ten days to complete, I was told not to worry about it because they had lots of experience. The project management team said they had 45 years of experience between the two of them. It took them fifteen days.
A contractor had several highly experienced supervisors on a project that included some very difficult rigging. The supervisors used their experience in handling a 6,000 pound item as the basis for a shortcut over the approved procedure to handle a 33,000 pound item. Projected savings: a couple of hours and a cost of $500. The heavy piece fell with a repair cost in excess of $1,000,000.
Often this statement is an attempt to suppress discussion. Alternatively, it is an attempt to avoid detailed planning as unnecessary.
Any time people tell you how much experience they have, get a detailed schedule and plans for every activity.
Trust, but Verify
Absolutes – it can not be done
At an oil refinery, the engineer estimated that replacing two heaters would require that a unit be down for 6 to 9 months. We did the project with a unit downtime of 6 weeks. Nevertheless, we challenged the presumptions and changed the method.
At a Louisiana paper mill, the original estimates to change out the economizer were 6 and 9 weeks. We did it in 12 days. We changed the method and challenged every assumption. An engineer told me that my method would require a plate girder 9 feet deep. We said ‘So?’ He then told us such a deep girder was irresponsible. adding because a beam that deep would be very expensive. I asked what he thought the downtime would cost the customer. We then asked him about building a cantilevered truss. We ended up with beams about 18” deep, tied back to the structure in a truss.
The state of Utah needed a bridge rebuilt quickly. The state offered large bonuses for early completion of an aggressive schedule. The winning contractor collected big bonuses. Late in the project, the state was trying to change the rules to avoid paying some of the bonuses. (Attempted to remove the approval of high early strength concrete, for example)
After the 1994 Northridge, California earthquake, the destroyed I-10 bridges were engineered at 360 days, bid at 110 days, and then rebuilt in 55 days. Big bonuses were earned; the biggest bonus was to the traveling public.
Delay in thinking is also high cost
Many projects can be done at 50% of somebody’s estimate; 25% might be doable, but this requires a re-examination of every assumption. Trying to just cram the project into a reduced timeframe without a willingness to examine presumptions is a recipe for disaster.
Five: Estimate Effort and Cost
When there are no detailed estimates of everything.
We just oversaw the construction of a house. The original budget had one-third of the budget in allowances. These are ballpark guesses for things that are hard to predict and the owner assumes all the risk. Builders also make small allowances to lower the perceived overall cost; then it is the customer who is increasing the cost. We converted the allowances to hard money bids and got the known costs nailed down.
We have a project in which one third of our scope is off-the-budget. Everything that comes up is assigned by the Construction Manager to be either on-budget or off-budget. Off-budget means they did not consider this item in establishing the budget. We could end up with a $20 million cost and an engineer/CM that claims they met their budget of $14 million.
Lack of estimates for effort, duration, and cost vividly demonstrate a lack of planning.
Estimates that are within 5%.
The teachers of estimating say that a detailed estimate is within 5%. We do not collect variances on the estimate. Contractors place gross margins on costs to account for their level of risk. We see margins of 20% for labor-intensive work and 40% for remodels (where there are lots of unknowns). Would a contingency of 40% for your project be ridiculed? Yet, we hire remodel contractors.
A contingency is to deal with unknown unknowns. The variation caused by unknown unknowns is greater than 5%. Lucky breaks do not happen as often as unlucky ones. The other risks, both threats and opportunities, must be addressed by the risk assessment and should not be included in the contingency.
Things will tend to go wrong more often than exceptionally right. On the other hand, we are much more likely to budget on the basis of everything going right than on the basis of anything going wrong. This is a call for a classic probabilistic look at the estimates, which we don't do very well. Monte Carlo simulations can help force more realistic budgeting but they are "too complex." In fact, simulation results vividly show how optimistic and unrealistic we are.
How the work done is ignored
When we worked on the Pan Am games, we proved badging technology, communication technology, computer registration software, and tested the entire methodology under partial load. However, we did not test the methodology under the live load.
We helped start up the Maysville paper mill; we tested every piece of equipment, then tested them in concert as a system, started up water as a pilot and made paper on the first day.
Always ask yourself how the work gets done, who works, when, where, and with what. How do you verify if people know how to work the project? You may learn surprising lessons. People are attentive, if they have never done the work before; however, you can suffer the consequences if the work has been done too many times.
Incomplete Cost Breakdown
Many projects have real cost problems because the cost breakdown has buckets that are too large to control. For example, having only one bucket for labor costs. Does the cost breakdown parallel the scope?
The finer the costs are sliced, the more likely the project will be a success.
On the other hand, overly rigid boundaries between buckets can lead to problems. The classic quality example is the system improvement suggested by a member of department A that will bring an additional $5.00 cost to department A and a $15 saving to departments B and C. A will never agree to this. Silly allocations of costs to budgets can lead to bad decisions.
Six: Schedule Performance
Schedules with even numbers of time units.
Schedules with even numbers of time units such as 5, 10, 15 days or two people 4 or 8 hours can create other issues.
This is time slotting and indicates a lack of planning, which also means the logic is suspect. There is tremendous fudge in a schedule with these units.
We make "safe" estimates that then turn out to not be safe at all because they are not in accord with reality. They are statements of intention without commitment.
Early Actual Completion
When the schedule is too conservative, an early completion can also cause problems. In one instance, the plant manager said the workforce would not be ready to meet a three-month early start.
Momentum can dissipate if the project or components are forced to finish a later schedule.
It is not the early completion that is the problem; it is being surprised with it. Early completion might fit the business case of the project very well but it can’t be included in the business plan if it is not understood or expected.
If you cannot understand the schedule
I once reviewed a schedule that had all kinds of work on the critical path that had no relevance with the primary project. The logic was not present. The schedule was not useable. Understand the logic and assumptions underlying the schedule. WBS is easy to say, but doing it is something else. First, break the work down and then schedule the work. People want to do both at the same time.
Schedules are wallpaper
Schedules and budgets are revised infrequently or never revised. Most projects require a weekly progress assessment, projected effort to finish, and schedule revision. The project is being managed by other means and these are not public.
The only budget/schedule that is meaningful is the one that reflects how we are getting from the beginning to the end of the job. We can’t usually unspend money or time. Crying about being behind is pointless until we figure out what we are ready to do to get on time or on budget. We can revise the budget by reducing scope, changing methods, and taking some risk. We are unlikely to get back on budget (and schedule) by working harder.
The "natural flow" for the project is ignored.
A contractor (in dismissing Construction Project Management as a useful tool) told the story of his buddy who insisted: “The #@*%^$ schedule had me down in the river bottom during high water and high on the bank during the dry season. You can’t run a job that way.”
Look for a natural process for a project to take.
Many times the logic ties to equipment and crew balance without following the constraints of the project.
The State of Utah stopped using CPM on project schedules when the CPMs consistently told them that the critical path was through the decision processes. A tool that pointed at management was not acceptable.
We once did a paper machine rebuild schedule that showed a portion of the critical path going through some totally extraneous activity. I told the scheduler to cut that duration in half. “How can you do that?”, I was asked. I can double the resource. This became critical because we gave it too much time, because we considered it unimportant. If we consider it important, we will put more resources on it so we can focus on what is important.
The logic is only constrained by the work, not by the project strategy. Schedule people and balance the crew at the same time so you never see an unconstrained schedule.
Seven: Procure Resources
Changes in Resources
Thick Stock Pumps
If what was required is not what was bought, there is an issue. If what is delivered is not now what was bought, there is an issue. If what is installed is not what was delivered, there is an issue. Resources are fertile ground for changes.
Issues might be summarized in Quality Assurance/Quality Control (QA/QC). In design: Is the communication such that we are sure we are specifying what is needed? In procurement: Are we ensuring that we get what we need? In installation: Are we ensuring that the installers understand the requirements? Are we ensuring that installation is according to our needs?
Changes in supervision/management
Any time someone changes on the project team, particularly in the supervisory area, it creates a land mine waiting to explode. Sometimes, the team is the problem and should be removed.
It isn’t just about the changes being made; it’s also about the attitude that conveys the idea that any project team member is expendable. This can lead to a lack of team building/bonding and a lack of investment in the team and in building the team.
On the other hand, a lack of a good leader or good chemistry might lead to a situation in which the team has to be changed. Once, after the entire management structure was changed, the job progressed much better.
Waste, visible lack of control over materials or tools
One PM returned eleven truckloads of pipe from a job site. The job didn't know what had been released or what hadn't. They had bulk factory shipments coming, but had lost track of them so they reordered the materials at out of stock prices—Eleven truckloads!!!!!!
We took delivery on tools only to find some inexpensive, but critical, tools were “back ordered.” In this case, that meant they could not be expected to ever arrive. Immediately, there were shortages of many other items, because workers assumed we were going to leave them short of tools. The solution was to very visibly spend $25,000 on small tools and the problem was greatly reduced almost instantaneously. We are convinced that failure to take prompt action would have resulted in losses far greater than the missing tools. The initial situation was recoverable because it was recognized and action was taken. Delay to do so could have been fatal.
One can't manage materials on imprecise information or best intentions. One must be methodical, thoughtful, intentional, and have systems for ordering, expediting, receiving, issuing, recovering materials, and other resources.
To not do so Leads to hoarding, duplication of purchases, and terrible inefficiencies. The importance to the success of the project of the materials can be all out of proportion to the money expended because it affects so many other areas.
Eight: Execute Activities
Irregular Rates of Progress.
Projects can go gangbusters for a while and then progress stops. Projects should accelerate until they hit a steady state and then they should stay there. The key is to make steady, predictable progress. Steady stable progress allows quality issues to be heard. Few people measure either the reliability or compliance with a schedule. Most projects are off as much as 50% on every weekly schedule.
Projects have two controlled speeds, fast and faster.
The First 5%
Recently, I witnessed the following church project: A project that is three weeks old and is two weeks behind schedule.
In tearing out an old paper machine and erecting a new one in Mexico, the project got off to a glorious start, ran smoothly, and finished well. The keys were detailed preparation and investment in supervisors who knew the plan.
The start of a project will tell you how the project will fare. Time is extremely crucial. Start up sets the tone, the tempo, and the values of every project. It must go well. Be attentive to the first 5% of the project. This is the most important time of the project and if this does not go well, the entire project will not go well.
Projects get off to a good start because of the upfront investment of the planning/management effort. I don’t care so much if the project starts behind schedule, if the attention is there, the “hole” is recognized, and there’s a plan to dig out of it. If the plan is to work hard, it won’t happen; then, being behind is just an invitation to failure
Anytime, Float is used
At times, the contingency is banked as the buffers mentioned in “Critical Chain.” The buffer is a trip wire telling you there is an issue. Without safety buffers, float is not managed.
Float must be managed just as other tasks are managed
Things falling through the cracks
On a project site, we saw a number of dumb things. Whenever asked, the people said, "It’s in the nature of construction that things fall through the cracks."
Few things should fall through the cracks. When they are allowed to, the management is inattentive to the detail.
Nine: Control Results
Changes in the Work
I have worked on projects with hundreds of changes that were handled with a good change order process; we knew they were coming and set up a process to manage them. Many times changes greater than 5% of the total can overwhelm a project
Changes in the work—this is insidious and indicates a lack of planning or forethought. Many people cannot see the project until they get into it.
Changes disrupt rhythm, which is usually underestimated as an impact. Delay may be more costly than any possible decision arrived at.
Engineering News Record had a recent article about partnering in California and why it had not achieved the results it had in Arizona. In Arizona, low-level employees make decisions and their bosses stand behind them. Arizona estimates they have saved $2 billion in construction costs as a result.
In the entire history of partnering in Arizona, two project issues have moved to arbitration.
In California, low-level employees are encouraged to make commitments that management walked away from. In one group of 150 "partnered" projects (those finished in a specific time frame), 115 were headed for arbitration.
We cannot deny change, but we must manage it. We must make sure that management understands the best way to both control and adapt.
Incomplete Cost Documentation
We like to see all the documents that accumulate costs on a project. If people cannot or will not provide timesheets, invoices, or airline tickets, you have a problem.
When there is no system or things are sloppy, fix them.
Government is missing millions of dollars on a great idea of “travel cards.” System ideas were good, but there was no system for review and accountability. Employees were allowed to buy laptop computers on their travel cards, which was totally outside normal purchasing controls, and ended up with unaccounted assets.
A friend tells me about spending the last three years cleaning up the undocumented purchases of several acquired companies. His company’s stock price dropped from 30 to 2 when it was revealed that they didn’t have effective systems to collect what was owed them and had discovered $15 million in payables they had not recognized in the purchases of other companies.
When progress is too good to be true, it is not
A contractor told us about two asbestos removal projects of identical scope. The buildings were duplicates of each other, in different cities, and with superintdendents who were twin brothers. After one week, the one brother had the asbestos removal done on 3 floors; the other brother had completed only 2 floors. The relative rates continued until the first brother announced he only had to clean up and get the asbestos packaged and off the floors and he would be done, but that all the asbestos was now removed. The other brother had all his asbestos packaged and removed from the floors he had worked on. However, he had one floor to go. After running behind in progress reporting for the whole job, he was suddenly ahead of the his brother.
Know what Progress is and what is Progress.
Quite often, this is an example of not taking progress consistently and not judging progress against a realistic standard. In government contracting it is sometimes a matter of activities started that is used as a basis for progress judgment
When the controls do not scale with the increases in work, increases in change, and with the speed of the project.
In refinery turnarounds, we have seen many examples of project control systems that would work for reporting progress if we were doing under 400 man hours/day. They break apart when the numbers get larger and they don’t scale. On some projects, we have seen all control systems demanded by the owner fail within 72 hours of the initiation of the turnaround. Sometimes it is because of insufficient manpower; sometimes, it is the manpower that doesn’t understand the system. We’ve sometimes installed our own duplicate systems ahead of time to provide for this eventuality. On several occasions, our simple systems have become the defacto controls for the turnaround.
Familiarity with control systems breeds apathy (and assumptions). KISS (control systems) but scalable..
10: Close, Celebrate, and Learn
No closure, no celebration, and no desire to learn or analyze … and the only time after-actions are conducted is on jobs gone bad. Conduct after actions on every job with the lessons learned contributed to a corporate body of knowledge.
As you see, there are many challenges to a project manager that force projects off the tracks. One profound solution is: Use the project imperatives: results, scope, performance, and risk to prevent trouble and to develop the response when there is trouble. We have found that the quality of the project, quality of the project process, and quality of project management directly coorleate with the quanitity and quality of planning.
You can prevent fires by:
- planning the plan
- planning the project (strategic, tactical, operations, task. tools)
- planning methods and performance
- estimating costs
- scheduling performance
- planning project management
- planning controls
- planning resouce management
- planning project team work
- scheduling on a weekly basis
- walking and watching metirics for any sign of deviation.
Exercise vigilence in all things!