Project Management Mechanics!

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Well no wonder we all have our experiences in riding our first vehicle and felt the first experience.
Well what has that to do with Project Management. Well the picture seems to suggest a child's collections but do you have more...?

Definitely  vehicles are ought be built with  safety  , travel comfort, minimal failures and that each manufacturer strive to deliver its own USP which stand to as an identity. Definitely everyone would accept that the enterprise think-tank  have done several rounds of commercials, engineering , manufacturing of research and development before the first vehicle is produced. This is where our entry of project management comes into play as a subset of Product Development in manufacturing.

Let us go one step further, and give kudos to those who have made the idea of the product into integrated-managed vehicle system. A managed system in place that is put to use to the maximum extent by a driver of the vehicle or auto-pilot(AI artificial intelligence) mode. The system is able to meet specific Requirement of  a driver (and passengers) and expectations managed. What else could we call Integrated-project management. The vehicle is agile in adopting to integrated project management statusquo for all the conditions (say transmission, fuel  injection, rpm, break, clutch, road conditions, user choice of speed etc) being influenced into it. Unless there are extreme conditions, the system is said to perform to the DOE (design of experiments) laid out by engineers in real time environment.

So project manager if he has a good project management system in place with strong integration points, the system should apply its AI cure in case of not-so-severe failures. Most of the Information Technology project is yet to reach this stage except few as in case of above AI itself as an example.

Let us find a way to build a project management system(PMS) that is well researched departmentally and apply CIP (continuous improvement process) project quality management to mature a better PMS for use. That is where, as a support, Data Intelligence can come into play as technology partner (say like BIGDATA as in previous blog) to highlight Project Managers with informed decision going forward.

So it is a mechanics or in built intelligence let us try to check...!

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Technology Buzz

There has been always a buzz in the emerging technology in the field of information age.  We are not talking about, Mobile , Cloud, or Social computing but "BigData" beneath them  a new trend in Business Intelligence.

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Simple ways to understand Task Relationship

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Last post we saw an example of how we can have practically allocate Buffers in a schedule.

This post we shall speak something about relationship between tasks/activities.

Failures to understand for example, generally in IT companies' project manager (not all) create schedule as static document (guess its a harsh reality) to be honest, during my earlier days I was doing the same a because of couple of reasons
a. I did not understand what to do, so just type the tasks, indent it
b. create a schedule for to keep away QA guys (not a good thing to do although)
c. Team meeting, Bugs status, kept me busy forgetting underlying unused schedule asset that I had.
d. Most of the time I become a student by-hearting SF,FF,SS, FS and use only FS and argue everything same

Let us talk how to go ahead and achieve this with ease...(for busy user read Takeaways)

Assume you are a product company who is planning for two releases in a year.
Assuming the requirements are clear but not practically possibly to implement all in one go.
We organize and prioritize (every important tip to project managers) what is "essentials now" vs "essentials for tomorrow".

Task Id denoted in ( ).
Having said that we plan for Product Feature List (5), The task Concept Design Starts(7) as soon as (5) is complete.
This is the common task relation (FS =Finish to Start) or predecessor-successor relationship which most of us very comfortable and familiar.
You have wonder tech team so the best thing to do is given them the job so. The concept design team hopes to give deliverable on day one,
to help other team to do Detail Design(8) start as and when the start. It is a kind of relay situation however taking practical things into
account you have a lag of 1 (say probably for review) and then allow (8) to start. This is a SS (Start-To-Start) relation.
( Another example you can imagine is Auto-Scan as soon as you have a Pend-Drive insertion to disk is initiated. )
Assume the (8) is started then you can call for the documentation team to Design manual (9) and and request doc team to end when (8) ends.
This may mean that doc team are ready with functional or flow help guide written and can finish final User Interface Designs at (8)'s end.
Eventually As and When (7) finish (8) also finishes
The last tasks Product List Feature Future(10) is constantly updated and finishes after 2 days of maturity after (7). You give room for correction on
upto 2 days for (7) so that (10) finish from as Release Notes as what will be available for next release. Which mean, Now you are ready with description of design
"essentials now" vs "essentials for tomorrow".

"Takeaways"...
The way we want to do it, "Reactive-Coordinated-Proactive approach" for logical realationship between tasks/activity.
1....Wait until I finish (Reactive) - FS  
2.... Watch me start (Proactive) - SS   
3....  Let us finish it (Coordinate) - FF  
4.... Finish when I start (Proactive) - SF 

In the above context lead/lags are influencing for better schedule planning.

So we encourage you to limit with books or downloads or terminologies but apply simple self-help in your schedule planning...

Hope it was useful.

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How to allocate buffers in schedule and set logical relations

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Scope: Project Time Management - Schedule Planning

+. Know About Project activity/task planning ( tasks listing and sequencing )
+. Know About Lags and Leads
+. Know About Project Buffers

Project is "Guruttam Contract Prospect"
Gather Requirement  -  2 days
Define Scope - 1 day
Identify Resources - 4 days

We assume tasks(activity) names and duration estimates. Let us further examine its attribute information.

1. Here is an interesting part.
You, the project manager, planned for a fine Monday meeting with the customer to Gather Requirement. Unfortunately, assume the customer would be busy with other priorities on the day of your appointment. What could we do? Well, we have to wait !

So where is this reflected in our schedule and how long does our schedule planning allow us to wait ? To answer this we try to understand next task Define Scope.

We have said Define Scope is a 1 day activity after Gather Requirement. But luckily, we had planned as +2 days as lag forecasting that this situation might well occur. So we are allowed with a 'buffer' of 2 days wait time. 'Buffer' as usually allocated as contingencies or time reserves.

Remember, this wait time(lag) is 'created' by the manager and is not a characteristic of project activity.

Assume Define Scope task - is a management activity (manager sets the scope). Usually management activity are not part of billing (activity level at the least) , so we cannot allocate a resource if it is going to add to the project cost. Hence, this 1 day is a 'buffer' this manager has wisely added as an activity. Call it as 'buffered task'. Having this task type as 'non-working time' will not add to cost, which may be a handy tool for buffer monitoring (used or did not use cases).

Either of the above two techniques may be used as 'Buffers'. Planners are advised not to use both technique (within a scenario) as it would be deemed as non professional conduct or would not be successful in practical sense under a 'constraint'ed schedule.

In case Define Scope task  is a non-management activity i.e. resource is assigned to set the scope, then it cannot be a 'buffered task' eventually in this case, lag as buffer can only be used.

Next Identify Resources -  starts upon successful completion of Define Scope (either when delay risks are resolved or when truly the Define Scope task (not as buffer task). We can also notice that it takes 4 days of hectic resource search by  HR colleague. However we give them as soon as we had Gathered Requirements from the customer/client.

We shall see few more interesting things with this tiny schedule on activity/task relation in next blog.

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Guruttam PMP Mock Question Series - 17

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We shall explain today Guruttam PMP Mock Question Series - 16 answers and move on to next question in series.

Answer:

Option 4) is the odd choice that should be ignored, because, rest of them are control measure place in project life cycle which qualify for project governance (controls).

Q17) (Level - Middle)

You have developed a network path schedule diagram. You see that there are 3 paths with n,n-1,n+1 activities in them. Path 1 is non-critical with 13 days, Path 2 is critical with 18 days, Path 3 is non-critical with 14 days. What is total float for activity A of path 1.

1)  3

2)  4

3)  5

4)  6 

Please feel free to answer or check our next post for answers.

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