Welcome to the Points-To-Ponder e-letter

Welcome to the points-to-ponder S5 Systems’ thought provoking monthly e-letter; in these periodicals, we bring you a discussion of the issues and ideas that affect project managers, software managers and project leaders. 

MANAGING PROJECTS FOR SUCCESS

Last month in our article “Why do projects fail?” we identified how side affects of “uncertainties” cause projects to fail i.e. projects fails to meet both the allocated time and the budget, because of inherent uncertainties which are a part of all projects.

Why do Projects Fail in Traditional Approach

Project Managers believe if good and detailed plans are created and followed closely, projects will get done on time. However that is not reality- as we all know from experience that in the real world projects have too many uncertainties which cause the project plans to go haywire, sometimes very close to the start.

Experiencing delays due to uncertainties project managers modify how they manage future projects, leading to the following side affects:

Detailed planning and tracking – Projects managers in future projects start to create very detailed and meticulous projects with lot finer and granular tasks. This unfortunately adds more work into tracking these finer detailed tasks. Uncertainties still occur which cause the project plans to become obsolete even faster since now slippage of smaller tasks causes the project to slip. In short more granular projects plans are more difficult to manage and do not help in project delivery.

Figure 1: Granular plans do not help in planning

Individual time tracking/Cost management – This is done when each individual and their tasks are managed. This encourages people to add more safety, reducing any chance of them reporting any early finishes.

Figure 2: Adding Safety inflates projects and causes delays

Gains are not flagged – Although delays are readily flagged, early finishes are not. Since extra safety was added, human nature causes this safety to be filled up loosing the benefit of early finish. Many times early finishes are not reported because they are afraid that early finish may become hard commitment next time. In either case added safety to manage uncertainties causes the project to delay.

Student Syndrome – Most people have a natural tendency to procrastinate. With safeties embedded in their commitments, it only becomes more tempting to make a slow start or delay the task to meet the projected dates.

Start early to avoid risk of delays – Managers because of their previous experiences of delayed projects start feeling the pressure to start the projects ASAP. The risk of delays is so high that they feel that not starting right away on any work that can be started is lost opportunity. In reality as more and more work is put in progress the pipeline starts to clog up with bottlenecks. These then make the situation worse as wait times and queues become higher.

The above issues are outlined in our July e-letter – “Why do projects fail?”

How to Manage Uncertainties – A Fresh approach

To manage projects effectively we need to manage the adverse affects of uncertainties in projects - some are outlined above. The following suggested approach is based on methods outlined in Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt in his book “Critical Chain”:

Procedure – Managing Uncertainties

Below provides the 3 steps required to manage uncertainties in your project plans:

1. Estimate Uncertainty Buffers
There are number of ways uncertainty buffers can be estimated. It is important to note that the uncertainty must not be included within tasks but must be managed in standalone buffers. Following are 3 ways to estimate uncertainty buffers:

2. Create Project Plan - Place Uncertainty Buffers
To understand and place buffers in the project plans understanding of the following definitions is required:

Critical Chain – Critical chain is the longest sequence of tasks in a project i.e. any delays to this chain causes the project to be delayed.

Project Buffers - The project buffers are uncertainty buffers placed at the end of a series of tasks to absorb the cumulative delays of the series of tasks in the critical chain.

Figure 3: Project Buffer

Feeding Buffers - The feeding buffers are uncertainty buffers placed at the intersection of critical and non-critical chains called Feeding buffers.

Figure 4: Feeding Buffer

Once the uncertainty buffers are estimated, place the Project buffers to absorb any uncertainties on the Critical Chain and the Feeding buffers to cushion the critical chain from the uncertainties in non-critical chains.

3. Manage “Critical Chain” Project

Once the Buffer Indexes are calculated for critical and other chains use these values to set forward-looking priorities:

Task Priorities are set based on the Buffer Index i.e. highest task priority on the critical chain is assigned to task with the highest buffer index i.e. tasks with uncertainty buffers heavily consumed leading to potential delays.         Chain Priorities are set based on the buffer index associated with each chain.

The above scheme in addition to assigning clear task and chain priorities which emerges from these simple steps also gets rid of the deficiencies associated with the traditional method; the scheme encourages people to report their early finishes i.e. gains are flagged and discourages people from hiding safeties - since explicit uncertainty buffers are added

Skeptical, if this scheme would work?
Are you skeptical if such a scheme would work – understandably so – how can such a simple modification to existing project planning methodology promise such great results?