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Control Factors in Project Management - Time

March 30, 2010 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Program Management, Time Management

Control Factors in Project Management - Time (#3 in the series Coordination of Projects in Project Management)
By Wouter Baars

Adding all of the time estimates for all of the projects that an organisation will conduct in the coming period provides an indication of the workload for that period. For a given year, the number of FTEs should exceed the total number of hours from the project plans.

Consider the following example: Ten projects together ‘use’ 20,000 hours. There are twenty FTEs within the organisation, each involving 1700 hours of work. Seventy per cent of these hours are available for projects, and thirty per cent are assigned for general work (e.g. meetings, e-mail, travel time, other tasks, educational leave). This leaves a net of 23,800 (20 x 1700 x .70) hours each year that are available for projects. In this example, therefore, there is sufficient capacity (in global terms) to carry out the projects in the coming year. It would not be possible to add many more without hiring additional employees (and this would require a margin as well).

The calculations above are based on a global, annual perspective. Additional detailed information is needed concerning the necessary capacity, specified according to the tasks or roles of the project workers. The twenty FTEs must be further subdivided into various roles within a project (e.g. programmers, project leaders, designers, system administrators). Although there are probably enough employees, in general, to carry out the projects for the coming year, there may be too many project leaders and too few programmers.

Finally, the workload (expected number of hours) of the projects must correspond to the number of available employee hours for shorter periods as well as for the entire year. If all of the projects in the example that is described above were planned for the first three months of the year, that would cause a problem, even though there would be enough workers for the entire year. The operational distribution of workers on a monthly or weekly basis is accomplished according to the scheduling of the phases of the projects, or time boxes for cyclical projects. In addition, weekly or monthly consultation between the programme manager and all of the project leaders is necessary in order to create operational schedules for the employees.

The following are frequent complaints within project organisations with regard to time:

  1. ‘There is no clear picture of the work pressure in this organisation. Sales and management keep adding new projects even though we are already having trouble carrying out the projects that we already have.’
  2. ‘If one project goes off schedule, it has many consequences for other projects. Because we must share resources, a delay in the first project causes delays in all the other projects’.

The first complaint is common in organisations that are growing quickly and that are oriented toward generating as much turnover as possible By implementing the control mechanisms that are described above, an organisation can gain insight into its capacity on an annual basis, as well as its operational capacity from month to month or even from week to week.

The second complaint has a number of causes. First, in organisations in which this complaint is common, people are often not capable of closing out old projects. Each time that a project is to be completed, the customer makes a new demand, a new bug is detected or the project is expanded. To prevent this situation, it is important that agreements concerning when the project will be completed are made as clearly as possible in the beginning of the project. Further information about addressing this problem is provided in the other chapters of this handbook. (Excessive) work pressure is also a possible cause of the second complaint. Because the organisation is so busy, it may allow no margins between projects. This can cause a slight delay in one project to have a direct impact on subsequent projects. Finally, the second problem is probably less common in organisations that use cyclical project management, as they work with fixed time boxes.

In an effort to increase productivity, personnel are often assigned to too many projects. An attempt to fill the lost hours with other projects, however, can cause serious delays, as illustrated in the following example (borrowed and adapted from Goldratt, 2002):

A programme manager must carry out Project A, which consists of three tasks (a), in addition to Project B, which consists of three tasks (b). Each task requires five time units. If the projects are carried out in the order ‘aaa, bbb’, project A will be completed in fifteen (5+5+5) time units. Project B will also be completed in fifteen time units, measured from the moment at which Project B begins.

Another image emerges, however, if the tasks are not performed in direct succession (i.e. they are performed in an alternating sequence). If a task (a) is performed in alternating succession with a task (b), the order of work is ‘ababab’. Projects A and B will now require twenty-five time units (5+5+5+5+5) each for completion. The fact that switching between projects also takes time has not been considered.

According to Goldratt (2002), the fact that organisations often assign personnel to many projects simultaneously is one of the most important reasons that projects take (much) too long. Projects that are slated for completion within three months often actually last more than two years. If the projects had been accomplished one after the other, each would have been accomplished in about three months.

This example, along with waiting-list theory, shows that it is not sensible to place such a heavy load on the personnel. Because of short-term cost considerations, management teams are primarily focused on having people work as much as possible. This causes projects to lose considerable speed. It is safe to assume that increasing the utilisation factor by ten per cent can increase the average turn-around time of projects by forty per cent. The costs of these delays, however, are much less visible, particularly in non-profit organisations.

Wouter Baars has a Master of Science degree in Industrial Engineering and Management Science. He has been a project manager for several years for The European commission, Waag Society, KPN (Dutch telecom provider) and many smaller organizations. He is specialized in creative projects such as serious game development, e-learning and software development. Currently he is teaching project management and coaching organizations that are working on their project management. More info on his work: www.projectmanagement-training.net.

Originally published by DANS – Data Archiving and Networked Services - The Hague

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 and is filed under Program Management, Time Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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