WEAK SCHEDULING IS a project management liability. Few project managers will deny that fact, because more than a few have suffered the consequences of a flimsy scheduling system. Successful managers understand that a robust system holds significant project control potential beyond its fundamental applications of planning and performance measurement. Even when basic scheduling is relatively strong, a project's management can benefit from enhancements and efficiencies that maximize system capability and products.
When project control is the primary function of a scheduling system, credibility is its most important attribute. A certain fate awaits the project manager who must depend on less-than-solid information. A system that's not reliable or which is being manipulated may be worse for project management than no scheduling at all. Experienced managers know that the technical methods applied to produce the schedule network can directly influence the credibility of products from the network. Benchmark scheduling systems are sound in their application of detailed processes that ensure consistency and discipline, since these are what sustain network integrity and credibility to provide the basis for realistic, comprehensive project control. Application of best practices is how well-muscled scheduling “hunks” show up thin, skinny systems on the project management beach.
But what of systems not up to benchmark standards? What approaches are suitable to improve an existing scheduling system that supports project management but is not altogether effective and efficient in doing so? Our recommendations address systems of this type, and they are readily adaptable for specific situations. Excluding a core set of six, the suggestions may be implemented separately. Scheduling pump-up can encompass as much or as little effort as the initiator decides. Certainly, it can be even more extensive than assimilation of all the tips presented here. The key is to preserve whatever gains are made and not let them shrivel away.
A Reality-Based Set of Best Practices
These recommendations evolved from a scheduling improvement initiative for the Department of Energy's Hanford Site, undertaken for the Tank Waste Remediation System Project. The government environment compelled certain requirements and processes for the subject program, and recommendations were developed under a process to “design” the system to achieve certain objectives, or outputs. Each prospective technique can be adopted or not, based on how well it serves to implement or enhance a scheduling function that supports discrete objectives for the system to be improved.
Steps to advance the original subject program were first to identify given inputs and then to specify the scheduling means expected to result in the desired outputs. Input parameters for the forerunner system were defined as infrastructure (tools and material capacity for scheduling), activity definition, logic drivers (commitments, need for integration, etc.), and resource rate/availability tables.
Outputs were expected to meet the soft objective—project control—and the more direct hard requirements: real schedule/report products, networks that reflect integration with cost and scope, and credibility. Credibility determinants can be established as criteria for any scheduling initiative, based on factors commonly accepted as drivers for the particular system or project. Later, decisive review will confirm whether or not system outcomes have met the criteria. For example, a credibility driver may be the need for critical path management (as in the government case). Participants determined which scheduling criteria afforded proper basis for critical path management and developed recommendations to sustain that capacity.
Here we present some of the recommendations that resulted from this government initiative. These suggestions generally assume a sizable program that schedules multiple projects of duration greater than one year, using computer software that calculates full range cost/schedule data for performance measurement. The scheduling system is presumed to support summarization for a hierarchy of schedules; some prevailing budget cycle; baseline management, including change control; and some regular performance measurement update cycle. Any assumption, and tips related to it, may be ignored if it does not apply for a particular system.
Pump-Up Proposals
Recommendations can be adapted and combined in multiple ways to condition and beef up a scrawny scheduling program. However, just as the lightweight is cautioned to consult a doctor before undertaking serious physical exercise in an effort to muscle up, the manager wanting to implement these recommendations is cautioned to consider how well the prevailing project situation will accommodate the initiative and whether there is need to plan scope and estimate costs.
Implementation of proposed approaches will build effectiveness and efficiency to continually improve overall program capability. A core strategy meant to ensure the essential prerequisite system is the basis for all subsequent recommendations. Certain core techniques, and others, directly reinforce scheduling as a central function of project management. The impact of any recommendation on an existing program depends upon the degree to which the system already conforms to the suggested convention.
Core Strategy
The core strategy is fundamental to success in meeting the required outcomes for scheduling: real products, integration with cost and scope factors, credibility. Especially for large projects, these six essential concepts must be in place to sustain credibility and provide an appropriate basis for project management.
■ Apply the critical path method for scheduling, incorporating logic sufficient to integrate all schedule levels; and constrain networks only as necessary to accommodate legitimate schedule drivers.
■ Develop hierarchical levels of schedules from top down (preferably with the work breakdown structure as the basis for vertical integration), and establish summary networks that allow electronic integration. Before proceeding with each lower level of development, validate the newest network against the upper-tier schedule from which it derived. After all levels are developed, report progress only on the lowest-level schedule, and electronically summarize progress for each higher level.
■ Load resources at the lowest schedule level available, and provide for resource summarization. (Potential exception: level of effort resource loading may be designated for one specific network only, when a hierarchy allows this limitation. See No. 4 below.)
■ Develop standard code structures, enforce their consistent application, and ensure that network dictionaries are fully developed. Practical discipline in this area is the basis for summarization on code. (For example, code by work breakdown structure and summarize for each tier. See No.1 below.)
■ Apply configuration control to establish baselined schedules as targets, limit access to baselines/targets, and enforce a schedule change control process. Consider a routine process for independent backup—controlled by someone other than the project scheduler—of baseline schedules, on approval and after updates.
■ Proceduralize scheduling processes, addressing even detailed mechanics/techniques that support critical path and credibility; document the procedures or desk instructions; and ensure compliance to them.
A manager is likely, at first glance, to believe that some or all core techniques are part of the project scheduling system. However, if the system has been identified as needing improvement, the first step is candid review of current methods to confirm that all core elements are being accomplished adequately enough to sustain the recommended intent for the system. Any elemental process not in place, or judged to fail intent, should be corrected in time to support subsequent implementation of any improvements related to it.
Scheduling Effectiveness. The dominant intent for this set of suggestions is scheduling effectiveness to serve project control. With the core strategy, execution will structure scheduling capability at the standard recognized for project management applications. For some projects, the first recommendation—install a product-oriented WBS—may be an “improvement” that is not a scheduling system prerogative. But overall project management should benefit if the WBS is product-oriented, to facilitate control of work scope and, in turn, cost/schedule performance. Identification of schedule activity flows inherently if approved technical scope is broken down as work and its products; and, typically, a product-oriented WBS implies precursory integrating logic for precedence schedules.
1. Product-Oriented WBS. Develop and define a product-oriented WBS that is comprehensive at every level for all technical scope. Establish WBS classifications according to endpoint product (not organization or function). Apply the WBS as the factor for integrating the schedule with cost and scope. Note that all work should be traceable through every level of the WBS and schedule. Example: Work described at the lowest WBS level as “pour concrete” can be followed through higher-level endpoints such as “build foundation,” “erect hangar,” and “construct airport.”
2. Schedule Basis for Performance Measurement. Eliminate opportunity for progress reporting based on actual costs, and otherwise strengthen project control by insisting that schedule networks be the primary source of performance data and calculations and the source of milestone status reporting. Establish electronic interface with the project's cost collection system so that actual costs can be incorporated into the network for calculation of integrated cost/schedule performance measurement, but ensure that schedule status is reported prior to the incorporation of actual costs. Provide electronic transfer of data to any other tracking systems that require status reporting.
3. Centralized Scheduling. Centralize the scheduling organization for control and consistent development, especially for large or multiple projects. Generate and baseline separate schedules for each project (or a single project, based on groups, phases, or other logical division); merge these subordinate schedules into an integrated schedule network; and baseline the integrated schedule as the performance schedule subject to change control.
4. LOE Criteria. Establish specific criteria for incorporating level of effort (LOE) activities in schedule networks, and code LOE activities for selective exclusion from schedule graphics when omission is desirable for presentation purposes. Where such limitation is appropriate, designate a single schedule network for LOE resource loading. For example, “operations” activity may impact a project generally, but not the schedule itself. Separation of operations tasks may be desirable to facilitate control of resources and cost at a level higher than for work segments needing to monitor schedule performance more closely.
5. Prioritization. Determine the appropriate bases for prioritization of scheduled work scope, and code schedule activities to indicate priority. This technique supports decisions based on “what if” scheduling scenarios where calculations move out some activities with flexible dates while maintaining early finishes for priority tasks with potential to impact the schedule end date.
6. Analysis/Trending. Establish processes for regular analyses of critical path and cost/schedule performance, based on reports from networks at all schedule levels. Ask schedulers to describe the system's capability for products easily obtained or developed, and apply them as tools to accommodate management of the project. Provide for performance trending by maintaining readily available historical cost/schedule information, or as applicable, regularly export cost/schedule data to a non-network database.
Scheduling Efficiency. These recommendations further augment the core strategy and other suggestions already given. They focus on process improvements expected to enhance overall capability and efficiency of the scheduling program.
7. Quality Assurance. Establish processes and specify responsibilities within the scheduling organization; this is for quality assurance verifications such as peer review, review of nonconforming networks and products, and offline checks of updates/changes/summarizations before their submittal to master networks. Consider assigning a “code cop” who maintains a routine to review network listings and reports for nonstandard codes, constraints, etc.
8. Scheduling Technicians. Use schedule technicians as the primary resource for data entry, especially if project schedulers are too often performing tasks not cost-effective. Use of technicians frees schedulers to do other project control work, such as performance analysis, that better serves the project and the project manager.
9. Activity ID. Apply a standard scheme for unique schedule activity identifiers (activity ID) that incorporate “intelligence” to readily indicate information about the scheduled activity; and ensure comprehensive development of the codes dictionary to support the activity ID scheme. For example, certain characters in the activity ID can show project, responsibility, or task number. (This suggestion expands upon the fourth Core Strategy to free up code fields previously used for information now embedded in more effective activity IDs.)
10. Standard Terms/Symbols. Establish standard terms and symbols and develop a base set of reporting formats to be generated consistently for different management levels and multiple applications. Although reporting to individual standards and needs of various managers is sometimes necessary, potential for efficiency should be developed. Inconsistent application of graphics/reports and terms/symbols often confuses the comparison of performance data from period to period, or between projects.
11. Dollars as a Resource. Indicate dollars as a resource in schedule networks by pricing out resources for activities, totaling the cost of all resources for each activity, loading that dollar figure as a separate resource in the activity, and summarizing the dollar resources for higher-level schedules. This technique is particularly useful when it is applied for review of high-level schedules that relate summary costs to summary activities.
This method provides a basis for budget-driven “what if” analysis that facilitates summary planning. When a project's duration extends over several years it may be advantageous to generate a spreadsheet database from the schedule network. Then dollar amounts are summarized for long-range planning and budgeting that is tied to the schedule and the resources it incorporates, which may be preferable to a budget-only spreadsheet basis for cost planning.
Just Do It!
Whew! Just reading about pumping up a scheduling program is hard work! How much tougher will actual execution be? The best answer is to make pump-up exercises as tough as the scheduling program can stand without adversely impacting the project. If full implementation is not necessary, or not practical, the line item presentation facilitates selection of a composite set of improvements.
Whatever combination of improvements best accommodates identified scheduling system needs, initial planning for implementation can begin immediately after decisions regarding which/how/when recommendations are executed. The manager who believes that proposed techniques are already part of the system should first determine whether incorporation is truly adequate to meet all suggested intents.
Recommendations presume two things: that project control is the primary function of the scheduling system, and that credibility is its most important attribute. In the government case described, various managers interviewed in regard to their expectations for their scheduling system confirmed these themes; and survey indicated that benchmark systems are well grounded in their support for both contexts. Lack of commitment to the concept of schedule credibility as the basis for effective project control is likely to limit application of the high standards and best practices that characterize systems of merit.
MAKE A PUMP-UP COMMITMENT. Don't weenie out! Implementation may well be a challenge that entails significant change, particularly for an established system, but these tips are worthwhile because of the overall project control benefits they hold. No pain, no gain! Just do it! … because project management is vulnerable to weak scheduling. ■
Marilee Camblin and Tom Schrimsher are PMPs employed by Management Analysis Company Technical Services. They provide project management consulting services to the contractor responsible for the Tank Waste Remediation System at the Hanford Site in southeast Washington State.
Reader Service Number