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The Benefits of Inch-Pebbles for Project Management Scheduling
September 18, 2008 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Project Management Best Practices, Scheduling
The Benefits of Inch-Pebbles for Project Management Scheduling (#5 in the series How to Use Inch-Pebbles When You Think You Can’t)
By Johanna Rothman
When you work on a project under time pressure, as many of us do, inch-pebbles will help you easily determine whether the project is on schedule. I like to combine inch-pebbles with project plan iteration to further reduce schedule risk.
Project managers get these benefits from using inch-pebbles:
- The project manager understands the project very well, so is able to monitor the project more effectively. If a task is late, you know within one or two days, so you have more options for replanning.
- The participants clearly understand what they will provide and when. Inch-pebbles can illuminate any interdependent hand-offs.
- Inch-pebbles can help reduce overall critical path duration. If you can enumerate all possible tasks, you may be able to overlap them in creative ways, reducing critical path time.
- Inch-pebbles may help create a more accurate schedule. (I don’t believe software people are “natural optimists”, I believe they just forget to account for some pieces of the project.)
Inch-pebbles help project staff and project managers understand the schedule in more detail. That detail helps illuminate risks associated with each task in the project, and the handoffs between people.
Summary
Skillful project monitoring is difficult. As the project manager, you define what needs to be done, assess the progress of the work already completed, and then define your confidence in the team’s ability to complete the tasks left to complete. Not everyone has the same definition of what each task means. Inch-pebbles can break down the tasks into small-enough chunks to make task completion clear. You can then get a “yes” or “no” (”done” or not “done”) answer about the state of each task. When you break tasks up into 1-2 day chunks, you don’t have to wait more than a couple of days to know if any given piece of the project is on schedule.
This article is an excerpt from the article “How to Use Inch-Pebbles When You Think You Can’t”, which can be found at: http://www.jrothman.com/Papers/Howinch-pebbles.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
- Assess the Project You're Working On For Proper Inch-Pebble Scheduling
- A Project Management "Truth" or Statement for Critical Chain Scheduling and Buffer Management
- Decompose Tasks to Inch-pebble Granularity
- Inch-Pebble Project Scheduling: Managing Concerns
- How to Use Inch-Pebbles for Building Your Project Schedule - Introduction
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