A Clock Chimes to Remind Us!

A recent conversation with a friend led to him saying:

“You know, Steve, I’m really not that interested in critical path drag. I think some of your other ideas—resource availability drag, RAD cost, the DRED, the DIPP and DIPP Progress Index, the CLUB—are much more important.”

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Since he is a Theory of Constraints afficionado, it’s not surprising that concepts like RAD, RAD cost and the CLUB, all related to resource constraints and their impact on schedule, would be of greater interest. And from the important viewpoint of resource leveling (ESPECIALLY multiproject resource leveling, which I call the “Holy Grail” of project management!), they certainly are crucial. Indeed, I believe that the DIPP and the DPI will wind up being my concepts that add most to our discipline--because they measure and provide a baseline for the performance of the project investment.

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But without doubt, it’s critical path drag (soon likely to be included in the 8th Edition of the PMBOK Guide) that has thus far had the most impact. Its importance is SO glaringly obvious: what work or other delay is adding how much time to the project duration? Even without drag’s immensely valuable corollary, drag cost (measured in dollars, euros or human lives!), the value of drag computation is what allows PMs and schedulers to see where best to direct their efforts at schedule compression and recovery.

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But there’s something else about drag that’s important, and which causes me to believe that just using a software package that computes it, and updates it, on each critical path activity as the project progresses, might actually reduce slippage!

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I have to credit Bill Duncan for this, as it’s closely related to something he focused on 20+ years ago, when I first described the concept to him. He made it the focus of the article “Scheduling Is a Drag!” that he wrote for ProjectsatWork Magazine (and was nice enough to list me as co-author).

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Bill realized that the mere fact of seeing, quantified, the time that an activity is adding could make team members work in a more time sensitive manner, their attention drawn to the critical path and its drag rather than to float! Instead of looking at the total float that’s always OFF the critical path (“Look! Activity X has 10 days of float! We don’t have to hurry. In fact, we could cut back on resources!”), team members attention will be drawn to the time each CP activity is ADDING! (“Look! The Gantt chart shows that Activity Y is adding 10 days to our project duration! If we could get it done faster we could finish sooner/deploy faster/avoid LDs/save on indirect costs/increase schedule reserve/move on to another project/SAVE HUMAN LIVES!”)

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In fact, even if no attempt is made to compress the schedule, the drag quantification of the critical path activities might at least be a reminder to the team that they are working on the critical path! And that any extra time they take WILL be added to the project duration! An activity early in the schedule, when there are still 48 weeks left, may seem less “critical” than one near the end. But the fact is that a week of drag on the first critical path activity is adding exactly as much time as a week of drag on the last activity!

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And THAT’S what a week of drag displayed on the Gantt chart’s critical path will remind everyone about!

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So, yes, critical path drag is neither a brilliant concept nor one that will save mankind. But displaying it clearly on the Gantt chart that’s on the wall of your team’s workplace might make folks more aware of what’s adding how much time.

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And if the dollar/lives cost of that time is also computed, the impact may be even more powerful!

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Steve the Bajan

Pierre Le Manh Jan van den Berg Jan Willem Tromp Dave Garrett Kelly Heuer Albin Xavier Dawn O'Connell Mohammed Azharuddin Alex Lyaschenko Jair Aguado Quintero. I.E, MBA, PM4R?, SpS. Vladimir Liberzon Martin Davtyan Saima Naqvi CIFP,MBA,PMP,ITIL

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