“Plan the Work, Work the Plan”

By Michael Avondolio 

Planning the Work: What Defines a Good Schedule? 

Managing projects requires attention to a set of detailed activities, their logical relationship or sequencing to each other, and the dates required to start and complete each task. Some tasks are certainly more critical than others in the plan, but all of them are required to be completed for a project to finish on schedule (not to mention within budget, fulfilling scope, and meeting all project expectations). We start a project and perform work needed to complete all project tasks sequentially, hopefully with work on tasks progressing every day until the project is completed. What ultimately happens in the majority of projects is the ‘unknowns’ become ‘knowns’ as work proceeds and actual progress of the project is compared against the planned schedule. Delays become evident and revisions to the project schedule are recommended or required. Delays may also require revisions to the project budget, scope, or even convincing or advising the project sponsors and stakeholders a change in their expectations on project outcomes or deliverables is warranted too. These are all worthy topics, but for this article our focus is the role of ‘schedule’ in successfully completing projects.  

You might wonder, “What is the best way to minimize this inevitable truth and maintain the project end date?” Constructing a project schedule that takes into account risks (unknowns), changes in scope, logical relationships between activities, and varying work schedules, using a tool such as Primavera P6 or MS Project offers Project Managers the best chance for success. A logic-driven risk averse schedule will provide real-time insight into the forecast dates of all activities in the schedule network. It allows the project team to take early action to mitigate emerged risks and minimize failures to meet planned dates. At Patrick Engineering, understanding these needs and placing an experienced Project Scheduler on the team is essential to a projects overall success. 

A properly constructed schedule consists of a collection of activities and milestones connected by a network of logical relationships to each other to generate a plan. This plan, from start to finish, tells the viewer how long it will take to perform these activities based on the durations assigned and the longest path through the schedule network. Building a realistic schedule assumes estimating realistic durations for all tasks, that take into account risks and establishing the correct logical relationships between all tasks in the schedule network. Schedule tools typically allow the project team to add a work breakdown structure (WBS), resource dictionaries, rates and calendars. Coding is at the discretion of the team creating the schedule but can be a very powerful addition to the plan when exporting content to Excel or other form of “flat file” for analysis and presentation of the data. Our team at Patrick Engineering is proficient in extracting schedule data and presenting it in a variety of forms utilizing Excel, Tableau, and Power BI. This allows drilling down into the schedule data and presenting visuals that provide the focus requested by our customers and management teams. It allows early action to be taken when the project veers from its established goals, and direction to correct course. 

Following schedule preparation, after all gathering team inputs and linking multiple team scopes to create the overall plan, review and acceptance of the schedule is the final step. A schedule is not a “project” schedule until all disciplines performing the work have agreed to the schedule and commit to the dates and hand-offs that make up the plan. When the project team refers to the schedule as “your” schedule rather than “our” schedule, team buy-in is missing and failure is imminent. It is crucially important to coordinate this last step in finalizing the plan, since without it the team undermines its ability to manage the project. Once attaining acceptance and agreement, a copy of the plan is set as the baseline to which the project management team will measure schedule progress. 

Working the Plan 

The schedule outlines the project teams plan to reach defined goals. As activities are performed, the schedule is updated weekly, or to some other agreed to cadence. The process of adding actual starts and finishes to the schedule, as well as revised estimated dates, establishes the forecast schedule. This is the working day to day schedule for the project management team.  The schedule calculates forecast dates based on original duration for tasks not started and remaining duration on tasks that already begun, in concert with the network logic relationships put in place by the scheduler. This informs the team of the forecasted project completion, based on the actual starts, actual completions and revised remaining durations. The ability to forecast future project dates is what makes the scheduling tool so valuable and differentiates it from a spreadsheet with target dates. The calculation will take into account varying project calendars as well as these logical relationships and remaining durations. For instance, you may have a crew working four-10 hour days a week and the remaining team following a standard five-8 hour days. Assigning a 4d/10h calendar to tasks performed by the 4x10 crew results in more accurate accounting of their time. An accurate accounting of durations and calendars, which define varying work weeks and holidays, is necessary to calculate the longest path through the schedule. Longest path tasks will affect the project end date if slipped and therefore demand management team focus and priority. 

We measure adherence to the initial baseline plan to predict where we are going and what course corrections are required to maintain our established project baseline finish date. As important as it was to establish accurate durations and logic in setting a baseline, it is equally important to collect accurate forecast dates each week as far in advance as possible. Most projects are not completed in perfect adherence to their baseline dates and variances are expected. In my past, I have had examples of a very simple focus on variances by noting the days early or late to baseline. The team would meet weekly and review the schedule and the impact of these variances and what was required to keep on schedule. I have also experienced a very complex focus on variances under a government approved earned value management system that requires detailed analysis be provided on variances exceeding established thresholds. The important factor in each was communicating these variances to the management team and as a team deciding what direction to take, if any, to get back on track. Variances are red flags that we as the project management team identify, communicate, and take appropriate action. The scheduler in this case can provide invaluable direction by providing to the team her or his analysis of the schedule network including content on longest path, total float, and potential logic changes.  

Analyzing weekly schedule performance also requires project management attention to total float. Total float of each task in the schedule shows where tasks can or cannot delay without having impact on the end date of the longest path. We as schedulers must discuss total float with our management team, and must assure its proper calculation in the schedule tool. I note briefly at the end of this blog, a very small sampling of focus areas to assure that total float is accurate.  For demonstration of what total float is and how it is calculated, an overly simplified example is included below: 

The longest path is the path from the project start to its finish containing zero total float (or in some cases where end date total float is required - the lowest total float path).  Any slip in finish to a zero float activity or milestone WILL affect the project finish date. In this example, the longest path is amongst activities C, B and E. Where float is evident in activities A and D, these tasks can slip the indicated number of “float” days without influencing the project finish date. I mention total float in this blog only because of its essential nature in providing true context to meeting schedule end dates. Without this, the project management team could be chasing every late task in the schedule without understanding the priority of those that truly impact end dates. 

I have been involved on projects where the schedule variance was due to on a large acceleration of scope. Project Management justified this variance as acceptable because they did not want to re-baseline a schedule and hold the team to an earlier completion date when contractually, they had committed to a much later date. When the change is considerable and you are no longer working to the plan, the baseline should be revised to align with a more realistic schedule. This helps re-calibrate discussions on forecast to baseline variances, and more sensibly manage the project. “Plan the work and work the plan”. If the plan is no longer valid in its purpose to producing an agreed to and established outcome, there is no sense working and measuring to it. 

Improve Schedule Fidelity and thereby Improve Analysis 

As noted earlier, here are some basic steps to improve float calculation and improve overall schedule fidelity. The schedule is a living document of the work to be accomplished, and continuous maintenance is required to assure indicators such as float are valid. Some essentials to constructing a valid longest path schedule are to limit the number of constraints as they have the ability to override logic. Constraints are simply that, a constrained date (task start or finish, or a milestone). Due to the lack of a logical relationship to start or finish an activity, a constraint is sometimes used. This should only be the case for the first and final activity in the schedule since open-ended relationships are not advisable and lead to errors in float calculation. You can use constraints to adjust your total float path to critical interim milestones. For example, adding a finish-on-or-before constraint to a finish milestone will assure all tasks in the network leading to and driving that milestone show the total float value to meet your critical milestone date. Limit finish-to-finish and start-to-start relationships as they create dangling open ends in the logic network. As a general rule of thumb, limit the duration of tasks to 44 days or less for 95% of the activities in the schedule. Long activity durations reduce the project team’s ability to take action on delays and in the case of adherence to an earned value system of project management, are unacceptable. The essentials list above is far from comprehensive and mentioned only as a start. Additional schedule tools such as Acumen Fuse can be run on your schedule to suggest where fidelity might be improved.  

Compile as many variables possible, in early stages of your planning process, to determine true scope and true timeline expectations. Also identify any risks, that could possibly deviate your plan from your forecasted completion. You will need to understand the degree of flexibility in the different case scenarios for each activity, in order to absorb what may be the unforeseen (in the degree this is possible). At Patrick we understand what it takes to deliver beyond expectations and on time. Give us a call for further details.