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The Project Schedule Was Either Too Detailed Or Not Detailed Enough

January 31, 2009 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Scheduling

The Project Schedule Was Either Too Detailed Or Not Detailed Enough (#1 in the series Project Management Mistake - We Didn’t Have The Right Schedule)
By Lonnie Pacelli

I can remember vividly my very first project schedule. My manager gave me the mission statement and an overall timeframe he thought it should take for me to complete the project. I diligently broke the schedule down to lower levels of detail. I continued to divide the overall timeframe among the tasks and assigned people to the tasks. I worked for days on end with my face buried in a computer screen developing the schedule. What I ended up with was a horrendously detailed project plan that had no logical dependencies identified, people being asked to complete 40-hour tasks in 15 minutes, and some people being asked to work 200 hours per week to get their work done. But by golly, the schedule met my manager’s timeframe request.

Sadly enough (for me), this is a very true story but one that I don’t think is too terribly uncommon. It’s pretty easy to ignore reality at times when you’re developing a schedule and to skip some fundamental steps in completing your schedule. You may get everything to look good on paper, but the result may deviate significantly from reality.

A project schedule is only effective when it is able to help you know that everything is on track and that you’re going to be able to complete the work on time. When your activities are at too high a level, you risk losing accountability, missing out on key dependencies or expose yourself to “90% complete syndrome” when the team reports progress that is not real. When your activities are at too low a level, you can frustrate your team members by unduly micro-managing them, creating a greater administrative headache for yourself, and confusing the team with an excessive number of activities to manage. Either of these can spell schedule slippage and can severely impact successful project completion.

I’ve learned to use two rules of thumb when defining the appropriate level of detail for a project plan:

  • Can the activity be assigned to a single person to complete the activity?
  • Can the activity be completed in less than 40 hours?

Let me explain my question rationale. In the first question, I have found that explicit, clear lines of ownership are vital to ensuring that activities are completed. Whenever there is an activity assigned to “the team” or some other group of people there is no single point of accountability thus no one truly owns the task. Therefore each and every task should have a named person that takes the heat if the task isn’t completed on time.

In the second question, the more time an activity is given to complete the greater the likelihood that you will be surprised at the last minute that the activity was not completed on time. I’ve gotten burned way too many times on an activity getting to 90% very quickly then taking twice the amount of time to finish the last 10%. Now, it’s not that I’m a distrustful person or that I think that people are overtly trying to deceive me. No one wants to miss a deadline and thus will continue to report that they are on target and hope that everything falls into place if things start going awry. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t. I prefer to leave as little to chance as possible. So, I’ve zeroed in on a 40-hour rule of thumb because it allows you to divert train wrecks on time but also doesn’t micromanage the team member. Depending on your environment, you may want to use something other than 40 hours, just be definitive and consistent in what you use.

Lonnie Pacelli is an internationally recognized project management and leadership author and consultant with over 20 years experience at Microsoft, Accenture and his own company, Leading on the Edge International. Read more about Lonnie, subscribe to his newsletter, see his books and articles, and get lots of free self-study seminars, webcasts and resources.

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