The Money Files

We’re almost at the end of the deep dive into the PMBOK Guide®-- Sixth Edition, and what it has to say about Project Schedule Management. Last time I looked at the Develop Schedule process.

Today we are moving out of the Planning process group and moving into Monitoring and Controlling for the sixth process: Control Schedule. This is the last process in the Knowledge Area.

Here are the previous instalments:

Plan Schedule Management

Define Activities

Sequence Activities

Estimate Activity Durations

Develop Schedule

Control Schedule Process

The Control Schedule process happens on an ongoing basis throughout the execution part of a project. As you are doing the work, you are constantly going back to the schedule to track your progress, make changes and ensure the schedule still reflects reality.

As a result, the biggest output of the process is changes. You won’t put every schedule change through change control, but you’ll be using work performance information to make daily tweaks to the schedule to keep everything on track.

Inputs

We see the common trend to simplify again in this process. Project schedule, project calendars and schedule data have been replaced by project documents in the Inputs list. You can still use all those documents for this process, but they aren’t called out individually any longer as specific Inputs.

You can also draw on:

• Lessons learned register – this turns up a lot in the PMI guidance for processes; it’s a constant reminder to check what other projects have learned before you go ahead with anything
• Resource calendars – because you might have to make changes as a result of changes to resource availability.

And of course this isn’t a definitive list. Use whatever you need to in order to track, monitor and control progress against the schedule in a timely and efficient way.

Tools & Techniques

There are a few changes to Tools & Techniques, but they are all logical and make a lot of sense.

Performance reviews is out. These related to contract performance specifically, if I remember rightly, so the focus here is on being flexible enough to acknowledge some of the work (if not all of it) is performed by people who are employed by the organisation requesting the project. If I’m honest, my big issue with previous versions of the PMBOK® Guide was around the fact a lot of it was written as if you were outsourcing a lot of the work and buying in lots of services from contractors. Yes, I’ve worked on projects where that is the case, but not all my projects (or yours, I imagine) have been mainly supervising the work of contractors. We have internal staff who are also heavily involved in doing project work.

Project management software and scheduling tool have been replaced by project management information system, as we have seen elsewhere in other processes.

Resource optimisation techniques is now simply resource optimisation.

Modelling techniques is out.

The new T&T are:

• Data analysis, which covers a wide range of techniques including earned value, agile tracking with burndown charts, performance reviews (which were specifically taken out and included in the more generic term here), trend and variance analysis of schedule performance and the ‘what if’ analysis we also saw in the last process.
• Critical path method. This is basically using the critical path progress to track progress. If the tasks on the critical path slip, so does the end date for the project. In many software tools you can capture the original critical path and then use the software feature to show you the comparison of the original against the current progress. You can also use the critical path to help you identify schedule risk that should be on your risk register.

Outputs

The Outputs stay the same except organisational process assets updates has dropped off the list. If updating your schedule and controlling your project resulted in some business process having to change, then by all means report that to the PMO as a lesson learned. If updating an organisational process asset makes sense then do it anyway, even if it is no longer an output of this process. If you’ve got an example of when you doing schedule control has changed the way your business operates, then let us all know in the comments below, as I’m struggling to come up with a relevant example. Thanks!

That brings us to the end of the Project Schedule Management Knowledge Area. Next month, I’ll be looking at the trends and tailoring guidance for this topic. As you’ve probably noticed if you’ve followed the whole series, we’re seeing more specific guidance for Agile approaches through the different processes, so I’m expecting to see more information about that called out in the PMBOK® Guide. Watch this space!

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It happens: your project budget won’t quite stretch to the full amount you are forecasting that’s required to complete the work.

But when you do have to ask for more money, how should you go about it? The conversation with your manager or sponsor can feel a bit awkward.

Here are the steps to take to ask for a budget increase (and get it).

1. Clarify why you want the extra

You’ll have to justify why you want the extra funding. Be clear about what it’s for and what has changed since your first project budget was put together. You might have a very good reason, such as a change to the project that has been approved – but is going to cost more.

Unfortunately, it’s often the case that the estimating wasn’t that great the first time round, so you simply got it wrong and need more budget to cover the existing work. Just be honest.

2. Define how much you want

So you know you need more. But how much more exactly?

Do your sums. If your estimating wasn’t up to much last time, use a different method for calculating what you need this time. Learn from your mistakes. Use your subject matter experts to help. Add contingency. Basically, get it right.

I know that’s tough, but take your time and get really clear on what additional funding you are asking for. This is important because it’s embarrassing to have to go back and ask for extra funds a second (or third or subsequent) time. If you’re going to have to ask for more money to deliver the project, let’s ask just the one time.

3. Put together a justification or options

You know what you need and you know why you need it. But so far, we haven’t explained that to anyone. Get your story clear. Justify why the additional funding is required.

If you are able to present options, do so. For example:

• If we want to deliver the additional functionality identified by the focus group during user testing, we will need an extra $12k.
• If we want to also address the security issue that was flagged by the IT testing during penetration testing, that will cost an additional $4k.

You’re presenting a menu of options for your project sponsor to choose from. They can choose to go forward with all of them, and will need to find the full allocation of funding you have asked for. Or they could pick and mix from the list, focusing on the changes and additional work that they feel will be most valuable for the project.

4. Talk to your sponsor

With that information in hand, it’s time to talk to your sponsor. Arrange a time when you’ll have the opportunity to discuss the options.

The conversation will be a mixture of presenting to an executive and also a general chat about the project. Be prepared to talk them through your justification, getting straight to the detail, but also for them to derail the conversation by talking about other aspects of the project that concern them. Make sure you get enough time talking about the funding issue.

They might not be in a position to make a decision straight away about how much additional funding you can have and for what. If there is a time-critical element to their decision making, let them know. For example, you might only be able to secure a special discount on a product until the end of the financial year, or something like that.

Be clear that you need them to make a decision.

5. Act on the decision

You’ve got the decision. You can either have the funding (hurray!) or not. Either way, you can now take steps to work on that basis. If you can increase your project budget, change your budget numbers (and record that the change was approved).

If you have been told that you can’t have the extra funding, you need to go back to the drawing board and review what you can achieve with your project. Maybe you need to deliver over a longer period of time, or release resources, or review what you can realistically complete with the money you have.

What tips do you have for requesting additional funding on a project? Let us know in the comments below!

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There are 5 steps in the procurement lifecycle:

1. Requirements
2. Vendor selection
3. Negotiation and contracting
4. Service delivery and performance monitoring
5. Renewal/contract closure.

This video outlines the steps and talks specifically about the requirements and getting the procurement off to a good start by understanding what you need from the exercise.

Read more articles about procurement.

What spreadsheet package do you use? Personally I use Microsoft Excel, although I do have Numbers on my iPad I case I need to look at a spreadsheet while I’m out and about. I sometimes use Google Sheets for personal projects as well, but I’m not massively comfortable with it.

Regardless of what tool you use, spreadsheets are a huge part of life as a project manager. Whether you are exporting data from an enterprise project management tool, creating a budget forecast or using filterable lists as a way to manage tasks, risks or issues, spreadsheets have so many uses in project management.

Here are some tips to make using spreadsheets easier – all tried and tested by me and colleagues over the years!

1. Add Notes and Comments

Add notes to your spreadsheet so you know how the formulae work and what estimates were based on.

You can do this by adding a separate tab to record notes, if there are a lot of them. I record the way I formulated an estimate for the budget, and what the figure includes, plus any assumptions around resource time and so on.

For short notes, I add them as a comment on the relevant cell. This is the easiest way to note when a cell was updated, or to record what was in the cell before you changed the estimate to be something else.

2. Add Version Control

Learn how to do version control on your documents (where version control is not added automatically by your software). Then add a tab to the spreadsheet showing a table with version control numbers.

When version controlling a spreadsheet, don’t try to add an incremental version number every time you update something. That would be time consuming and not add any value. Instead, do a major version update every time something substantial changes, such as changing major formulae or rebaselining. You’ll get a feel for when it’s important to create a new version.

3. Freeze the Top Panes

Project management spreadsheets can get quite large. In Excel you can freeze the top and side rows so that you can scroll through the spreadsheet and the headers stay in place. It makes reading and moving around a big spreadsheet much easier because you don’t lose the column and row descriptors.

4. Lock Cells

Use the functionality of your software package to lock cells that you don’t want other people to update. For example, in a status tracking spreadsheet, you might have cells that you need to have populated with ‘Open, Closed, On Hold’ etc.

You can fix the spreadsheet so that only those options are permitted. You can also lock cells so they can’t be changed, which is helpful if you have a form and you only want to allow people to enter information in certain places.

5. Add Conditional Formatting

Conditional formatting means the cell colour (or whatever section you choose) updates based on a rule. For example, if the contents of the cell is a number less than 50%, make the cell turn red. This is achieved using a red background fill. You can change the text colour, or use other formatting rules.

This is helpful when you have a large data set and you want to instantly draw people’s attention to figures that are outside the acceptable norms. You can colour code information as red, amber and green by setting up conditional logic once, and adding that formatting.

What tips do you have for making it easier to use spreadsheets? Share your best advice in the comments below!

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When you’re planning how to deliver quality results, and what needs to go into your project schedule, it’s worth looking at what regulations and standards you need to adhere to.

In this article we’ll look at the difference between regulations and standards and what that means to you managing a project.

What is a regulation?

A regulation is a requirement for your project. You have to follow regulations.

Regulations include applicable laws.

For example, there are a range of regulations that can influence the way you approach your project and what you can and cannot do. Here are some areas affected by regulation:

• Breaks for workers and time away from their job e.g. for lorry drivers
• Overtime hours
• Maternity, paternity, family, sickness and medical leave
• Health and safety
• Data protection
• Reporting e.g. for accidents or spillage of controlled substances.

Laws vary between countries, so check what is applicable to where you are based. Also note that in multinational projects, the laws and regulations might differ for people on your teams in different locations.

What is a standard?

A standard is a guideline. Your project should follow guidelines because they are there for a reason, but if you can justify why you need to approach something in a different way, then you don’t have to follow the standard.

For example, it might be the standard that no one in your office works on a bank (public) holiday. Let’s say it is normal for the office to close over the end of year period when many colleagues are celebrating Christmas. However, your project is to upgrade the telephony switches. Knowing that the call volumes will be low and no one will be around to answer calls anyway, you might decide that the Christmas period is the perfect time to do that project work. It’s not standard, but it’s the most appropriate solution for your project and least disruptive for the business.

Not all standards or regulations are going to affect every project. It’s important to have a view as to what is important for this project. It is something I would consider and resolve as part of project initiation, so that I can go into project planning with all the information needed.

How do standards and regulations affect projects?

Standards and regulations affect projects in a number of ways.

1. By affecting project scheduling

Any time legal compliance is required, you can bet you need to add extra time to the schedule to have the legal team check out what you are doing and ensure the project is ticking all the boxes. Build in enough time for regulation-related checks and work.

Equally, with resource-related regulations, you may have to constrain working time which will have an implication for the schedule. For example, you may not be able to use overtime hours, or you might have to factor in travel time to your schedule if your resources aren’t permitted to go over a certain amount of travel before taking a break.

Some of these constraints could be legislation affecting workers, others might be the way your company operates (or as PMI would define them, enterprise environmental factors). An example would be dictating that the standard working week is 40 hours. You would take that data and ensure your schedule reflects a 40-hour standard working week.

2. By affecting project quality

If you have to follow regulations or stick to standards, this could have an implication for project quality. You might have to do additional quality checks, or use particular materials. An example would be building control. In the UK, you need building control to sign off on construction work. You can’t simply carry on building or assume everything will be OK without having someone come round and inspect the site. That’s an external quality check you have to consider and plan for.

3. By affecting project budgets

If your project needs a building control check, you have to pay for that. The building controller will charge you for his or her time. That cost needs to go into your project budget forecast. Depending on what regulations and standards you have to abide by, your project costs will need to accommodate the related charges.

Once you understand the standards and regulations that affect your project, and how they are likely to affect the project, you are able to plan for them. Some might need mitigating factors and adding to the risk register. Others will be easy to manage, perhaps by adding a little extra time or an additional task to the schedule.

Do a bit of research at the start of your project and then incorporate what you need to so that your project, and your organisation, stay compliant with the relevant regulations and standards.

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