Are We Making Progress to Plan?

The concluding question in "5 Questions PMs Must Ask," is the fifth and final question: how do we know we are making progress? The answer requires measures of effectiveness and performance stated in tangible units that are meaningful to all stakeholders.

With a clear and concise description of “done” — in units of measure meaningful to the decision makers; with a Plan and a Schedule baseline established for delivering the outcomes; with confirmation that we have enough resources, time, and money; with the impediments identified and handling plans in place … the remaining question is how do we know we are going to make it on time, with the planned budget, and that the product or service is going to work?

The solution starts with defining the measures needed to answer the question. These measures include:

• Mission need — stated in terms of Capabilities needed to accomplish the desired outcome. The mission, vision, and strategic goals are derived from the Project Management Plan (PMP), Project Charter, or Project Strategy (Project Balanced Scorecard).
• Measures of Effectiveness(MoE) — operational measures of success that are closely related to the achievements of the mission or operational objectives evaluated in the operational environment, under a specific set of conditions. These measures are stated in units meaningful to the buyer, focused on capabilities independent of any technical implementation, and are connected to the mission's success.
• Measures of Performance(MoP) — characterize physical or functional attributes relating to the system operation, measured or estimated under specific conditions. These measures assure the system has the capability to perform and provide an assessment that ensures the system meets the design requirements that satisfy the Measures of Effectiveness.
• Key Performance Measures(KPP) — represent the capabilities and characteristics so significant that failure to meet them can be a cause for reevaluation, reassessing, or termination of the program.
• Technical Performance Measures(TPM) — are the attributes that determine how well a system or system element is satisfying or expected to satisfy a technical requirement or goal.

These measures are needed to provide insight into progress-to-plan. Each measure has units tailored to the needs of the recipient — the customer speaks in terms of Mission and Effectiveness, the provider (developers, engineers) speaks in units of performance, KPPs, and TPMs. The unit measure connecting all of these is Earned Value.

All measures of effectiveness and performance must be in tangible units. These Completion Criteria must speak to “done.” For example:

• All drawings of the configuration controlled item are complete per engineering procedures. Signed off, and entered into the database as complete.
• Software module unit tested and peer-reviewed to attest to the baseline functionality and requirements.
• Technical data package for design of the fire detection system completed per engineering procedures and meets all baselined, allocated requirements, and technical performance criteria.
• Courseware module complete per learning objective procedures.
• Test procedure completed and approved and includes all baselines and allocated requirements.

Phrases like this appear to be overkill. But the answer should be in tangible evidentiary materials delivered at the planned time for the planned budget. These types of descriptions are included in the Work Breakdown Dictionary, part of the Performance Measurement Baseline. The grammar used to speak about making progress-to-plan is shown here:

Each element of the Integrated Master Schedule — each work activity — should have a grammar that speaks to its Maturity, Action, Product, and Product State. This grammar provides insight into what to do during the work effort, how to measure progress, and the expected outcome of this work effort. Here are sample words used for stating measures of progress in the Integrated Master Schedule:

With this grammar, the participants in the project can ask and answer “what does Done look like” in terms meaningful to the decision-makers. This phrase is repeated often in this series of articles for the simple reason it is not used enough in many project management contexts.

Measuring Progress to Plan

In order to increase the probability of success for any project, we must install and use the five immutable principles. Measuring progress to plan is the final one, but all five are needed. So let’s remind ourselves of them one final time:

1. "What Does Done Look Like?" — What are the needed capabilities that will be produced by the project? Do we know what these are in terms understandable by the project's stakeholders? Is there a consensus that these descriptions are sufficient for everyone to recognize Done when it arrives?
2. “How Do We Get There?” — Do we have a credible plan, schedule, and cost profile for the planned work that will produce done?
3. “Do We Have Enough to Get There?” — Do we know what we need, when we need it, how to acquire these needed items, a plan to acquire them, and every other question around resources and materials? This is essentially a supply chain problem for the project.
4. “Managing Impediments to Progress?”— Do we have a credible risk management process, one guided by a formal method? Not just a list of risks, but a “risk handling” process with planned responses to each risk, with cost and schedule allocated to each response?
5. "How do we know we are making progress?" — There is only one way to answer this: physical percent complete at the planned time, that percent is expected to be at a planned value. If we don’t meet that planned percent complete within the planned variance, then we’re late, probably over budget, and most likely not complying with the planned technical performance.