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Measure the Project Schedule When It’s All You’ve Got

March 14, 2009 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Scheduling

Measure the Project Schedule When It’s All You’ve Got (#5 in the series Measuring Project Progress)
By Johanna Rothman

I don’t use just Gantt charts to measure a schedule. Instead, I look at when the project team expected to meet a particular milestone and when they actually met that milestone. If the project team starts the project late (no matter what the first milestone is), that project is not going to meet the desired end date. Time lost is never going to be regained. Figure 1 shows what a comparison of schedule estimates and reality looks like.

Figure 1: Schedule Estimates vs. Actuals

This project is a modified waterfall lifecycle (the next phase can start without the previous phase being complete), but there are no iterations. Notice that the project started a full month late. When the project manager posted this chart, he also said this to senior management, “Don’t expect us to pull in the schedule by a month. We started late; we can’t make up the time.” To the project team he said, “I’d like you to work as intensely as you can, without working overtime and getting tired. We don’t have time for you to make mistakes. Do the best job as quickly as you can, and we’ll keep tracking where we are.”

This original article can be found at: http://www.jrothman.com/Papers/are-we-there-yet.html

Johanna Rothman consults, speaks, and writes on managing high-technology product development. Johanna is the author of Manage It!’Your Guide to Modern Pragmatic Project Management’. She is the coauthor of the pragmatic Behind Closed Doors, Secrets of Great Management, and author of the highly acclaimed Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets and Science of Hiring Technical People. And, Johanna is a host and session leader at the Amplifying Your Effectiveness (AYE) conference (http://www.ayeconference.com). You can see Johanna’s other writings at http://www.jrothman.com.

Related Articles

• The Value of a Project Schedule
• Deliverable-based Project Schedules: Part 4
• Deliverable-based Project Schedules: Part 5
• Deliverable-based Project Schedules: Part 6
• Deliverable-based Project Schedules: Part 3

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