In project settings (or even in other endeavors), the manager must contend with having too much information. Sorting through details takes time. Time is of the essence in making many of the risk-based decisions to be most effective and it is limited in many instances. Often, decisions still have to be made, making it quick and dirty. Given such limitations, people often rely on rules of thumb or “heuristics.”
Talk with anyone you know, and you will quickly pick up something that sounds like an example of heuristics applied to an ordinary life situation. Heuristics refer to typical experiences associated with risk-taking and risk-based management decisions that either worked or failed. Unfortunately, they might not give the best information, so it is always prudent to think of their applicability.
Heuristics – The Old Man’s Wisdom
I will mention some management heuristics here, in this article. Let us call them “The Old Man’s Wisdom.” The list barely scratches the surface of what an excellent risk-based manager needs to know, but it is a start.
These project management rules of thumb apply to situations we face in our daily life. After all, our everyday life proceedings are like a series of projects. Our very life span is a project where each year is a period in our project timeline until we are a hundred percent complete or suddenly terminated.
Traveling from Calgary to Phoenix is like a small project. Painting the fence to preserve the wood, replacing the water heater to address a low hot water supply, and watching a movie with friends to enjoy the evening are all risk-based projects in a way. A particular activity is like a project.
Let us carefully digest these syllogisms using a project manager’s lens because they might soon become handy.
Heuristics are constructive in situations where one has limited information. It is an excellent benchmark to assess data accuracy and possible outcomes. It brings to the surface discernable alignments and misalignments of supporting project elements.
Access and assess the importance of missing data
For example, a project manager may have checked his engineering resources and noted that all the disciplines he needed for the project were accounted for and registered. He asked the engineering manager for the summary of qualifications, but the summary table was not available.
Project management professional who wants to be decisive and unfazed may find that heuristics can help them make the right call. It is sound, based on logic and on what previously worked. It talks about key risk indicators, the right scale to measure decisions against.
The project manager reflected on the missing information and asked the engineering manager to pull together a summary table of experience promptly within three days before he signed the engineering management plan on his table.
The result: forty percent of his engineering resources were juniors, 50% of which had less than one year of experience or a fresh graduate. He also found out that they were assigned critical design roles. He asked the engineering manager to hire qualified resources to lead the juniors. He remembered what his mentor said:
“The greatest asset an engineering manager has is not the number of his engineers, but the quality of his disciplines!”
It is a valuable heuristic to analyze the quality of the project’s resources.
Project Plans Mean Little without Stakeholder’s Buy-in
The wisdom residing in this quote points to the essential nature of a dynamic project team. It revolves around the mandatory requirement to undertake an interactive planning session to create an execution plan or improve and finalize an existing program, ending in declaring an agreed-to baseline. A successful interactive planning session is a hallmark of a well-developed project schedule.
For a project to proceed smoothly, without fear of significant obstacles and contradictions, the stakeholders must be part of the planning process. They would like to be convinced that the plan is achievable, that the plan’s schedule is complete, and that the goals are attainable. This is what we are looking for when we require a buy-in.
Stakeholders, especially the powerful and influential ones, should be a part of that participative planning discussion. This gives them a sense of ownership and confidence that the execution plan will work successfully.
If this vital requirement is ignored, it will just be plain tricky, as the project will be going against the grain of it all. The resistance within could kill a project or make it dismally unproductive.
Plan and Schedule According to the Right Level of Details
It is wise for the client organization to define the standard schedule level it is willing to use and leverage in each project phase. Considering the availability and maturity of information at each checkpoint, we can infer that the project will have to start with a high-level schedule during the initiation and scoping stage (beginning stage), perhaps down to the area or phase level. The site includes the engineering plot layout and design subdivisions such as common areas (A1), utilities and off-sites (A2), infrastructure (A3), and so on. Examples of typical phases considered are engineering, procurement, construction, and commissioning. The work breakdown structure governs the level of detail.
Large organizations are bound to choose either level 2 or level 3 details for the control schedule detail. A level 2 schedule breaks down the activities to the discipline level, like electrical, mechanical, control system, civil, and structural. Status 3, on the other hand, breaks and groups the activities up by work package, such as module work package, engineering work package, construction work package, etc.
Planners and schedulers are an intelligent and creative bunch of professionals who sometimes, without the guidance of a knowledgeable Project Manager, can get lost in the details. Indications of too much detail start to become noticeable when the schedule begins showing hundreds of tasks that have very short durations, like a day or two.
When the client project manager starts seeing activity descriptions detailing the installation, such as receiving and shaking out materials, pre-tie re-bars, set form, pour concrete, cure, remove/strip form, etc., the project might be wasting too much time tracking the details.
This kind of detail is the construction contractor’s responsibility, and their schedule should be set up so that a convenient roll-up to the client’s level 2 or level 3 is done during each reporting cycle, without too many complications.
“Digging the best hole in the world is of little use if the hole is not needed (Lewis, 1997).”
The client’s schedule is generally at a higher level, while the main construction contractor at a lower field installation needs details to better manage theirs. The sub-contractor, on the other hand, might find it more useful to further the details for better field control but should roll up to the principal/prime contractor’s field installation work package (level 4) schedule, or perhaps even a level 5 schedule, assuming the sub-contractor is maintaining a nuts-and-bolts schedule.
Rule of thumb: detail the project schedule down to the level where managing is more effective.
Project Control is Only Possible with a Baseline
The baseline plan is the formal instrument that a project needs to initiate, monitor, and control. Without this instrument, one does not even have a starting point for control.
It is difficult to know what to do next. It is a formulation of who, what, where, why, and how future activities will be executed. All essential stakeholders must agree to the conceived end-results.
The plan is a necessary input into the scheduling process. It is an essential part of business decisions by putting a crosshair on key organizational targets. It provides a handle in executing the risk-based project schedule. If you do not know where you are going, how will you know when you get there (Lewis, 1997)?
“[Alice said] ‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.
“I don’t know where…” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat (Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland).
However, new project management practitioners must understand that planning is much more than just stating goals and objectives. It includes determining the most effective ways of reaching the end goals and in-between deliverables.
Let me know what you think. What’s your take?
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About the Author
Rufran C. Frago is the Founder of PM Solution Pro, a Calgary consulting, product, and training services firm focusing on project and business management solutions. He is passionate about providing advice, mentorship, education and training through consultation, collaboration, and what he uniquely calls, student-led training.
Our website: www.pmsolutionpro.com
BOOKS AUTHORED BY RUFRAN FRAGO
- Risk-based Management in the World of Threats and Opportunities: A Project Controls Perspective.ISBN 978-0-9947608-0-7.Canada
- Plan to Schedule, Schedule to Plan.ISBN 978-0-9947608-2-1.Canada
- How to Create a Good Quality P50 Risk-based Baseline Schedule.ISBN 978-0-9947608-1-4.Canada
- Schedule Quantitative Risk Analysis (Traditional Method).ISBN 978-0-9947608-3-8.Canada
- RISK, What are you? The Risk Management Poem: Children’s Book for all Professionals.ISBN 978-0-9947608-4-5 (Canada)
OTHER BOOK AUTHORED BY RUFRAN
Grace, The Guardian Angel.ISBN 978-0-9947608-5-2.Canada
