Most integrators are not asking the right questions.
Often, when inquiring after the status of a project, people ask one or two questions:
“How much is done?” and/or
“Are we on schedule and on budget?”
To which the replies are invariably:
“Almost done, don’t worry” and/or
“On time and on budget.”
But this is not asking the right questions. The problem is, both questions implicitly promote incorrect behavior by Project Managers and team members. We have placed them in a position where we’re fostering them to lie about the status because no one – especially in this industry – wants to be the bearer of “bad news”.
Those typical answers, which are always anticipated (and often expected), leave the inquirer with very little knowledge and — too often — a false impression of what’s really going on. They can also leave Project Managers who answered the questions in a state of panic.
“Now that I said we’re on schedule and on budget, what am I going to do to make it look that way?”
What are we really after when we ask people for a status report?
We are after more than just the status.
What we really need to learn are the answers to three interrelated questions that measure a project’s performance:
- What is the current STATUS of the project in terms of the scope, time, cost, quality, and risk parameters?
- What is the project’s PROGRESS against those key project parameters?
- And an educated FORECAST of the future based on the variances between the project’s status and progress?
Let’s define each of these terms to better understand what responses we’re looking for:
STATUS tells us where we currently are in the project implementation process – where we stand today;
PROGRESS is a measure of where we are (status) versus where we planned we’d be – how much is remaining; and
FORECAST is what we think the future holds based on our status / progress and any measurable variances, and should be based on existing trends versus miraculous intervention.
There are some best practices which enable integrators to begin asking the right questions.
The first is an “apples-to-apples” paradigm when it comes to how a company estimates, plans, schedules, assigns, tracks, and measure variances of its direct labor. All these actions must match – and they often don’t so we end up with fruit salad.
The second is that all direct labor track their time accurately. This especially applies to salaried employees, often Engineers and Project Managers. If they work more than 40 hours per week, we need to track it – from both a project variance basis as well as a capacity planning basis.
The third is a subset of the second – we need the unvarnished truth as quickly as possible – and we need to reward the truth. I have seen too many companies reward the answer – “On Time / On Budget” – and seen Project Managers moving numbers between projects, telling people to charge projects they weren’t working on or projects which can “handle the overage” better.
The fourth is that the project performance information must be timely and shared transparently. If a Project Manager has to wait over 2 weeks to get the project numbers from Payroll on a I week duration project – that water is under the bridge and far downstream – nice data to beat someone up with but not a very useful tool with which to proactively manage a project based on early variance trends.
Conclusion
When an integrator follows these best practices, (most integrators follow some, few follow all), and if we understand the interrelationships between the project’s elements (Scope, Quality, Time, Cost, and Risk), we can learn to report on status, progress, and forecast in a routine cadence. This will create accurate and transparent information to make meaningful, responsive, and proactive decisions.
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Title: Importance of Strategic and Operational Planning
