In my critical chain world, I have buffer management to tell me when to consider and/or take corrective actions to recover a project that is in jeopardy. I've been trying to compare this approach with others, and have failed to find any consistent guidance, other than fuzzy threshold limits in EVA and seat of the pants judgement embedded in some risk assessment approaches.
How do others determine that things are going wrong enough that something extraordinary must be done?
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John ZacharProduct Dev Manager| Association for Project Management (APM)Brackley,, Northamptonshire, United Kingdom
Frank,
I'm not a proponent of critical chain, but I am a successful PM consultant, practitioner, educator, etc.; and I sympathise with your position.
In my world, I do two things that help me determine whether action needs to be taken. I drive some of the uncertainty out of earned value by not considering or including partional completion in my earned value calculations. I know that this hides some work in progress, but I can stand that if I work at a higher level of granularity in terms of what I deliver.
I define what I am going to deliver, in terms of the projects products - the deliverables, and do this at a level of granularity that helps me plan, monitor, and therefore control when appropriate.
My plan consists of a product breakdown structure, a work breakdown structure, a resource plan, risks and issues, and a budget - I could spend much more time here, but I don't think I need to. Using the above, my plan, I can then construct my schedule, probably using somehting like MS Project, or perhaps a pen and paper.
When I have my plan and schedule, I can monitor where I am, against where I wanted to be in terms of time and cost. Quality is a function of what is delivered, and whether it has met its acceptance criteria. If it has, then it is included in my earned value calculations, if not, it isn't.
Using earned value, I can then look for variances, and if the variance exceeds a certain figure, usually different in each project, based on the criticality of the project within the business, then I know to take action.
Control limits my friend, control limits. Saving Changes...
Khalid A. ElzairyGM| ECO Consultant OfficeElwasta, Bani Sweef, Egypt
Control the identified risk, control the schedule by working on and follow the tasks to the optimistic duration if it happens ok if not take action to catch the most likely durations, control the cost by focus in the resource and equipment management and finally take care and control the quality, if you do that you can guide your project to success completion. Saving Changes...
"People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in the world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and, if they can't find them, make them."
