What is Schedule Quality?
12 years 3 weeks ago
As a scheduler within various industries, I have been asked “What is Schedule Quality?” In fact, if you pose this question to various project personnel, you may receive more than one answer per individual! Why? Some view “schedule quality” as a simple series of measures and techniques. I believe that the pursuit of schedule quality is a multi-front battle.
The United States
Management By Walking Around
12 years 4 weeks ago
I met a lovely old guy last week at a Fleetwood Mac concert at Madison Square Gardens who was an Attendant there. We got talking while I was getting a beer and he told me he'd worked there for forty years, he remembered when Fleetwood Mac first played there 20 years ago, Led Zeppelin filmed Song Remains the Same, Rolling Stones tours, he'd seen them all, I was very envious
Cost is a management output
12 years 4 weeks agoThe simple fact ignored by most accountants, general management and project managers is that cost is an output from the management process, and pretending cost is a manageable input is a recipe for disaster.
Profit is the difference between the price received for doing work and the cost of doing the work. If the work is accomplished satisfactorily for less then the price that will be
Why the PMBOK is not a Methodology
12 years 6 weeks agoOne of the more common discussions on the web and in other places is focused on arguing the merits of, or comparing, the PRINCE2 Methodology with the PMBOK Methodology.
The problem with the proposition is basic premise is completely wrong! The PMBOK® Guide is not and never has been a methodology. Methodologies define the processes, responsibilities and workflows needed to
PMI Standards Update
12 years 8 weeks agoMost people with an interest will know that PMI have released the PMBOK® Guide 5thEdition, the Standard for Program Management 3rdEdition and the Standard for Portfolio Management 3rdEdition, with an official publication date ofthe 31stDecember 2012. PMI’s other key standard; the Organisational Project Management Maturity
The Case for a Standard Data Reporting Format in a Massive Multi-Contractor Environment
12 years 14 weeks ago
If my team and I were on a mission to standardize our program control software, we might perform a benchmarking exercise. I firmly believe if we performed such an exercise, we would find that one-hundred different organizations would have at least one-hundred-five software architectures between them. In fact, that may be optimistic.
Schedule and cost control tools have
A Brief History of Scheduling
12 years 16 weeks ago
The science of ‘scheduling’ as defined by Critical Path Analysis (CPA) celebrated its 50th Anniversary in 2007. In 1956/57 Kelly and Walker started developing the algorithms that became the ‘Activity-on-Arrow’ or ADM scheduling methodology for DuPont. The program they developed was trialled on plant shutdowns in 1957 and their first paper on critical path
The Scheduling Conundrum
12 years 18 weeks agoThe scheduling conundrum is simple:
We know effective scheduling makes a significant difference to project success and we know what effective scheduling looks like but in most projects, the schedule is ignored, bad scheduling practice is the norm and most projects finish late.
The business of scheduling and its underpinning concepts and theories underwent a revolution in
Project task durations
12 years 20 weeks ago
Probably the most common action undertaken by project planners everywhere is assigning a duration to a task; most of us do this almost automatically. Generally it is only when a dispute arises that the complex interaction of the factors discussed involved in setting the duration come into play.
There is no universal answer to the question of what is the ‘correct’ way to
Distributed -v- Consolidated Contingencies
12 years 20 weeks agoDistributed contingencies are normal in most aspects of project management but often result in sub-optimal use of resources. Typical examples include allowing some safety margin in each CPM duration estimate (eg, setting the durations at an 80% probability), allowing contingencies on a project by project basis for risk, setting budgets with a 90% confidence limit, etc.
A better approach
