How Do We Get There?

A good plan tells you what done looks like on your project; the schedule defines the steps to get there. Here is an approach, grounded in activities and artifacts, that can improve the credibility of your schedule. It measures progress based on accomplishments rather than the passage of time and the consumption of resources.

In the Post, 5 Questions Project Managers Must Ask the 5 Immutable principles that must be addressed by Project Managers and Teams in order to succeed were presented. In the Post What Does Done Look Like? detailes the measures needed to ass progress to plan. Now we need the processes to Get To Done.

With a description of done established, we need to know how to get to done. The first step is to separate scheduling from planning and the execution of the schedule. There are three elements in answering the question, How do we get there? They are:

1. The Plan – the strategy for the successful completion of the project
2. The Schedule – the steps needed to fulfill the plan
3. Execution – the physical performance of these steps to deliver the results defined in the plan

A good plan tells us what done looks like in units of measure meaningful to the decision-makers. These units include Measures of Effectiveness and Performance; Key Performance Parameters, and Technical Performance Measures. Notice that these measures do not include cost and schedule. While important, cost and schedule performance measures have little to do with the project’s ability to fulfill the mission and vision of the stakeholders.

A good plan also describes the accomplishments along the way toward done that must be in place for success, including criteria for each of these accomplishments, which will be measured by the units described above.

Finally, a good plan outlines the sequence of the work that produces tangible evidence of compliance with the criteria.

With the plan initiated, let’s look at this table of activities and artifacts for ways to improve the credibility of the resulting schedule.

With the plan in place, a Schedule is needed to define the work and the sequence of that work to produce the deliverables. But this schedule must define what done looks like first, before defining the work efforts to get there. This approach starts with defining the maturity assessment points in the project where we ask and answer the question: What level of maturity for each deliverable is needed at this point in the project to continue to make progress as planned?

The diagram below shows the process of vertically scheduling the project for each Program Event — from Work Packages to their Accomplishment Criteria, to the Significant Accomplishments, to the Program Event. Only then, can planning take place horizontally for the dependencies between Program Events.

These Events are assessments of planned increasing of the maturity of the products or services. They are maturity assessments, where pre-defined deliverables are assessed to ensure that Technical Performance — measures of what done looks like — is being met against the pre-defined metrics. In addition, it ensures that the pre-defined levels of risk are being retired or mitigated as planned.

This approach to defining the master schedule is a paradigm change from traditional techniques. This change starts by measuring progress as the completion of the Accomplishment Criteria and the fulfillment of Significant Accomplishments. This progress is described as physical percent complete rather than measuring progress through the passage of time and consumption of resources. The elements of this approach include:

Events

• Project-unique, key transition points between major program activities.
• Points of convergence across the entire program where specific functionality comes together for release, testing, or integration.
• Key decision points where it is necessary to assess progress in achieving objectives before proceeding.
• May include major milestone reviews, program design reviews, tests, deliveries, and other key progress demonstration or risk mitigation points.
• Should be well distributed over the program/project period, and not inordinately clustered. It is not desirable to have too long a period pass without checking critical program progress.

Accomplishment

• For each Event, the project shall state what progress is to be measured at the event.?This breakdown of principal tasks and activities becomes the accomplishment(s).
• An accomplishment is the desired result(s) prior to or at the completion of an event or milestone that indicates a level of the program's progress.
• The Accomplishments are critical efforts that must be completed prior to completing an Event.

Criteria

1. Are measurable and useful indicators demonstrating the required level of maturity and or progress has been achieved.
2. Criteria include the use of Technical Performance Measures and other metrics wherever possible to provide measurable criteria. Preferably the accomplishment criteria should avoid the use of percent completed and avoid citing data item report numbers rather than identifying and summarizing results.
3. Criteria include the use of Technical Performance Measures and other metrics wherever possible to provide measurable criteria. Preferably, the accomplishment criteria should avoid the use of percent completed and avoid citing data item report numbers rather than identifying and summarizing results.