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Critical elements in planning

3 replies [Last post]
Mon, 2014-06-02 09:39
Sandra TH
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Dear members,

I am seeking some advice from experts on project management/project planning.
Although I am not working in this area, I am currently conducting a scientific study related to project planning. It aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the plan development process as determined by the project development team's characteristics and team interaction processes. My participants will have to solve a case study related to an organizational process improvement need and based on the determined needs suggest improvements. These improvements they will implement into the project plan, which consists of activities, time frames, resources, costs, risks, quality and communication/plan dissemination. Each team will work on this for about an hour or so, so it is just a brief plan purely for study purposes.
Now I'd like to determine what are the most important elements in the plan that they should be focusing on, which are critical for the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the advanced plan. I've read some of the project management literature to get the gist of the domain and so far I understand that scope definition, activity duration, risk assessment and cost estimating are the central elements that influence planning success. Would you consider other elements as important or what in your opinion as practitioners is the central piece for project planning?

Thanks and I hope you can provide some insights!

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Mon, 2014-06-02 14:51
#1
Rafael Davila
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The project development team is the party that can have more influence on the final outcome.

  1. It is not uncommon for the delays be caused by the actions of the project development team, usually lack of involvement during the design stage to end up adding changes to the project scope in the worst moment.                   http://ascpro0.ascweb.org/archives/cd/2012/paper/CPGT166002012.pdf
  2. It is the project development team the one who makes the contractual rules everyone else must follows. Here is where many wrong things are done.
    1. The means and methods are hijacked from the hands of the party who is responsible to execute and coordinate the schedule tasks. Frequently government agencies brand name specify scheduling software, taking away from the contractor his own tools.
    2. Management Methodologies are also hijacked and imposed. Most notably Earned Value Management, a methodology that promotes holding obsolete baseline in order to keep variance reports. The Big Dig stands out as a classic example of how misleading holding a baseline can be.                                                                               http://warnercon.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/AContinuouslyChanging1.pdf
    3. There are other restrictive scheduling clauses that while some calls them Best Practice I would call Worst Practice. One of them is preventing the planner from using buffers or schedule margin by requiring schedule to use all available contract time. 
    4. Resource planning is frequently lacking on schedule requirements. Many schedules are issued without consideration of resource constraints. It is impossible to place 100 cranes on a single building, there is a practical limit. Planning with unlimited resources even when physically feasible promotes planning for idle resources, resource smoothing is performed by means of efficient resource leveling strategies. 
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Mon, 2014-06-02 12:21
#2
Stephen Devaux
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Hi, Sandra. Sounds like an interesting study.

I agree with Gary, but would take it a bit further -- not just activity sequencing but a critical path schedule. And although you're not likely to get this from any other source, I would urge that the scheduling process always needs to be informed by an estimate of the value/cost of time on the project. How much does each passing day that the project is not finished (or an interim milestone not reached) reduce the value of the improvement? In my experience, those projects are planned and managed best when there is a clear sense of the value/cost of time (a data item all too often left as an "externality").

BTW, one more detail -- it really sounds as though what you are having the team do is not so much a project as a program. A project is defined as an effort to deliver a product, service or result. A program is an investment to deliver benefits derived through the coordinated management and execution of a menu of both projects and non-project work.

Fraternally in project management,

Steve the Bajan

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Mon, 2014-06-02 10:48
#3
Gary Whitehead
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The major area you are missing is the sequence of the work (the logical links, or relationships between each activity)

Without understanding the logic between the activities you do not have a plan -all you have is a to-do list.

 

Apart from that, I would suggest definition of assumptions is an important piece of the puzzle.

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