Project Management

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Project Scheduling issues

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Vivek Sharma Project Manager| Asia Pacific Group - Education & Migration Services New Delhi, Delhi, India
What corrective action should be taken before execution work starts, in case the project plan created in RFP stage has most of the tasks with incorrect duration factored? Can the project plan be re-baselined as once submitted, the customer will not allow any revision.
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Drew Craig Sr. Agile & Product Coach| Vanguard Philadelphia, Pa, United States
From what I read, there was an initial schedule created based on the information available at the time, and during the RFP period, essentially, providing a schedule framework from which to work and base rough, initial estimations.

With more precise data, the schedule should certainly be updated to reflect, then baselined. From this point on, you will be tracking against the final, baselined schedule.
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Philippe Schuler Senior Instructor/Lecturer in Project/Program/Account PMO Management| Independant Consultant Les Choux, France
Here Quality Schedule reviews should formally identified the root caus of the déviations. Wrong durations could have been estimated then approved because of wrong work effort estimates and/or wrong resources asssignment. So the scope of the sources of errors can be very wide.
Then a formal change should be submitted to a Change Management Process / Change Advisory Board to insure of the right communication, sharing, understanding and approval enable a new and valid Schedule Baseline.
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Sergio Luis Conte Helping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based Organizations Buenos Aires, Argentina
Each time you create data into your project take into account Barry Bohem´s Cone of Uncertainty. While it was created for software the information you can find there was taken for lot of other domains. The Cone demostrate the inerent error you have into your estimation becuase the amount of information you have. So, I mean that you never will get "the right" schedule on hand because all your estimations depends on the information you have. If you do not have this in advance and you have published your estimations then is time to plan an strategy to negotiate with your client (no matter it will be external or internal the situation is the same, you have to negotiate).
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Rami Kaibni
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Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten Associates New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
I agree with my fellow colleagues - It is somehow an iterative process (At least in the beginning) and should be revisited as soon as more information is available so in my opinion, yes, you should revise the baseline before the construction starts and before signing any contracts with your contractors.

From this point onward, it will be tracked against this new baseline.
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Deepesh Rammoorthy ICT Project Manager ( PMP®AgilePM®Certified ScrumMaster® (CSM®))| Australian Red Cross Blood Service Tarneit, Vic, Australia
Where vendors are involved, there is certainly an inherent risk of time and cost.
I am hoping that the Project schedule prepared will take into account the following
1) Time taken for the customer to create RFP
2) Time taken for the vendor to respond. At the RFP stage, in My understanding, any estimates provided by the vendor still has a Rough Order of Magnitude because it still requires elaboration and discussion with the customer
3) Review of the vendor's response and Clarification from customer
4) Conversion of the vendor's proposal into draft Statement of Works
5) Both parties agreeing on the milestones and deliverable in the Statement of Works after one or more reviews

All this is ideally done before the vendor commences work and the SOW should cater for any contingency for time and cost because even if all the due diligence in the world is completed, there is still an inherent risk left.
The SOW produced at this stage should not leave room for any surprises rather than the small contingency reserve.

Therefore , there should be no need to approach the Change Advisory Board or the Project Steering Committee.

If after this detailed progressive elaboration, there are still risks and uncertainties then I would suggest to call in the big guns.
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1 reply by Philippe Schuler
Feb 22, 2017 4:29 AM
Philippe Schuler
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Deepesh,
I agree with your pro-active actions. They should lead to a clean and correct Schedule. But nevertheless if errors or misunderstandings or non accurate schedule details appear after the formal agreement on the Schedule and impacting the Baseline, all necessary corrective actions afterward MUST be submitted and approved by a CAB or PSC before you can update the Schedule.
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Philippe Schuler Senior Instructor/Lecturer in Project/Program/Account PMO Management| Independant Consultant Les Choux, France
Feb 21, 2017 6:31 PM
Replying to Deepesh Rammoorthy
...
Where vendors are involved, there is certainly an inherent risk of time and cost.
I am hoping that the Project schedule prepared will take into account the following
1) Time taken for the customer to create RFP
2) Time taken for the vendor to respond. At the RFP stage, in My understanding, any estimates provided by the vendor still has a Rough Order of Magnitude because it still requires elaboration and discussion with the customer
3) Review of the vendor's response and Clarification from customer
4) Conversion of the vendor's proposal into draft Statement of Works
5) Both parties agreeing on the milestones and deliverable in the Statement of Works after one or more reviews

All this is ideally done before the vendor commences work and the SOW should cater for any contingency for time and cost because even if all the due diligence in the world is completed, there is still an inherent risk left.
The SOW produced at this stage should not leave room for any surprises rather than the small contingency reserve.

Therefore , there should be no need to approach the Change Advisory Board or the Project Steering Committee.

If after this detailed progressive elaboration, there are still risks and uncertainties then I would suggest to call in the big guns.
Deepesh,
I agree with your pro-active actions. They should lead to a clean and correct Schedule. But nevertheless if errors or misunderstandings or non accurate schedule details appear after the formal agreement on the Schedule and impacting the Baseline, all necessary corrective actions afterward MUST be submitted and approved by a CAB or PSC before you can update the Schedule.
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Prateek Gupta Gurgaon, Haryana, India
Planning and scheduling is not an one time activity. In PMP terms it is called rolling wave planning - plan evolves as we get more information.

Now to your challenge on how to sell this to the client. If you would have made a water tight plan with proper assumptions and dependencies, you can also go back and tell that some assumptions have got defeated and what is the impact of that to the plan.

If I were your client, I would want vendor to talk to me at the start rather than trying to swallow an incorrect plan.

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