+ Event Based Scheduling

OK kids, We’re gonna paint the garage floor. Everyone off the couch and in the garage with smiles on your little faces

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Dad’s gonna “program manage” your efforts to a successful outcome using Event Based Scheduling 10 November 2006

+Core Problem of all Project’s

!  Collecting project costs is relatively easy

!  Obtaining real physical progress status of ongoing activities is much more difficult

!  This is the 90% syndrome – or in some cases the 80% syndrome !  When physical progress is reported by the activity owners, without a

way to cross check of the achievement – true progress is often hidden !  Om many cases progress is equated to the passage of time and

consumption of money

!  Replacing this progress–oriented reporting with deliverables–oriented reporting is the starting point of real performance management – an authentic, trusted and verifiable performance measurement

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Failed or underperforming projects are more common that not. Learning how to address one of the problems found in troubled projects is the topic of this Brown Bag session

+Themes of Event Based Scheduling

!  Progress is measured by the completion of Significant Accomplishments (SA)

!  The evidence of this progress is provided by the Accomplishment Criteria (AC)

!  Task progress is only measured as 0% or 100%. No partial credit, no percent complete – either its done or it’s not done, either we’ve accomplished our accomplishment or we haven’t

!  The “architecture” of the project describes the increasing value maturity of the deliverables through the completion of the Significant Accomplishments

!  Defining what “done” looks like and scheduling backward, tells us when we should have started the project

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+Events For Our Family Garage Project

!  When asked to “make a plan,” our first impulse is to make a list for all the work to be performed. Here’s a list of the garage floor painting work …

!  All our sports “stuff” cleaned up

!  Get the garage floor washed and dried

!  Put down epoxy sealer and let it dry

!  Paint the car stalls

!  Put everything back

!  Park the cars and close the doors

!  Let’s just focus on item #1

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Events are celebratory occasions, where a collection of Significant Accomplishments has been “accomplished” with measurable outcomes, judged by the Accomplishment Criteria for the work performed

+First Some Definitions

!  Event – A major transition point in the project. The place where the maturity of the deliverables can be assessed to determine if we should proceed to the next step

!  Significant Accomplishment – An interim, critical, or discrete activity that must be completed prior to an Event

!  Accomplishment Criteria – A measurable indicator of the evidence that increased maturity or progress has been made towards a Significant Accomplishment

!  Task – The work performed in support of accomplishments and their criteria

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There are some new terms we’ll need to use when we’re speaking in the “Event Based Scheduling” vocabulary

+Get “stuff” Cleaned Up Event

!  It needs a finite duration

!  There needs to be a clear and concise definition “cleaned up”

!  Measures of success need to be defined

!  When we reach the logical stopping point when “all” the stuff is cleaned up – Mom says its time for lunch is not a very good measure of success !  There are clear and concise benefits to getting to this point

!  We could stop here and still have benefits

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Let’s look at the details of our first Event – “all the sports stuff cleaned up”

+Event: “All the stuff cleaned up” – Let’s Eat

!  Significant Accomplishment (SA) !  Interim, critical or discrete activity required to complete prior to

an event

!  All Baseball Equipment Located and collected for storage

!  Accomplishment Criteria (AC) !  Measurable indicators of evidence that demonstrates the

achievement of maturity or progress in an activity

!  Bats, gloves, pads, and uniforms placed in their labeled bags and hung on hooks

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A Significant Accomplishment (SA) is getting all the baseball gear into bags, hung on the wall, bats in a bag, and batting helmets in their racks

+Significant Accomplishment (SA)

!  SA: Baseball Equipment Stored in Assigned Location

!  The Accomplishment Criteria for completing this Significant Accomplishment includes:

!  Location for each baseball item identified

!  Pads, balls, hats gloves located, sorted, and placed in a pile of like stuff

!  Bats located and loaded into a single bat bag

!  Equipment bags located, emptied of food, drinks, and mice droppings

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The Significant Accomplishment of getting all the Baseball gear into bags is measured by the completion of the Accomplishment Criteria

+Accomplishment Criteria (AC)

!  AC: Locations defined for each identified item

!  Tasks to complete the AC include: !  Labeling all bags with their contents

!  Cleaning the bags

!  Determining if the bag can hold the equipment

!  Finding new bags, if there is not enough room in the current ones

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Accomplishment Criteria (AC) is the Exit Criteria for the work performed by the Tasks. When all the work is done, the AC is 100% complete

+Project Management According to Yogi† !  Planning

!  You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there

!  Communicating !  I didn’t really say everything I

said

!  Decision Making !  If you come to a fork in the

road, take it

!  Measuring progress !  You’d better cut the pizza in

four pieces, because I’m not hungry enough to eat six

!  Executing

!  Think? How the hell are you gonna think and hit at the same time?

!  Managing

!  You can observe a lot just by watching

!  Meeting deadlines

!  I knew I was going to take the wrong train, so I left early

!  Closeout

!  This is like déjà vu all over again

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† “Yogi Berra, PMP,” Ralph Sacco, Computer World, October 23, 2006, pp. 44

+ OK, Enough Baseball Let’s have a business example that moves us from the old world of time and cost measurement to the new world of accomplishments and exit criteria

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+Provisioning a New Employee

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Human ResourcesNew Employee Ready to Work

InsuranceOrientation

Laptop Account SetupCharge account setup

Information Technology

Finance

Buying authority

Supply Chain Management

Significant Accomplishments

Project Event New Employee Ready for Work

Project Event New Employee Arrives

A new employee arrives. What needs to happen before she can be productive? How can we measure the progress toward being productive?

+Structure of the Event Based Schedule

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Business StrategyBusiness Strategy

Process StepProcess Step

WBS Element or Subsystem

EventsEvents

TasksTasks

Accomplishments

CriteriaCriteria

Significant Accomplishments

(SA)

Accomplishment Criteria (AC)

SubsystemSubsystem

State of the Project

State of the Project

State of the Capability

State of the Process

Demonstrates Maturity

Identifies End Item

How

Defines

Customer/Program Direction

Program/Team Direction

Team DirectionPerformance

Team Status

Team Status

Something Completed

EffortExpended

DeliverablesDeliverables

+Describing “Done” in a Single Phrase

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Perform Work

Maturity Maturity

Adjective

Action Action

Verb

Provisioning Final

Capability Capability

Noun

Desktop

Demonstrates Maturity End Item

“ A01B02a: Preliminary Month End Close of the General Ledger Complete ” “A01B02a: Final Desktop Provisioning of New Employee Complete”

Step in the Process

State State

Verb

Complete

Closure State

+One More Review of Our New Terminology

!  Events – define the state of the project

!  Significant Accomplishments –demonstrate the state of the capability !  This is the assessment of maturity of the deliverable at a point in

time

!  Accomplishment Criteria – demonstrates the state of the process

!  Task – describes the effort required to complete the Accomplishment Criteria

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The terms of Event Based Scheduling need to be repeated over and over. This helps replace our temporal progress thinking with event maturity thinking

+And Some More Detail Of These Terms

!  A Significant Accomplishment describes … !  A desired result

!  A discrete step in a process

!  A description of an interrelationship

!  An Accomplishment Criteria describes … !  Completed work effort

!  Activities that confirm the value

!  Completion of critical activities

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+AC’s are the Central Elements of the Plan

!  Define the measure by which an Accomplishment (SA) is considered “done”

!  Terms like: complete, delivered, closed have no “units of measure” in the context of a Significant Accomplishment (SA) are weak and open to interpretation

!  Terms that use … !  Measures of completion – 80% of training materials published !  Counts of available items – 75% of entry forms approved !  Fidelity of a design – 90% of Use Cases converted to UML !  Error bounds – network performance within ±12% !  Performance parameters – backup duration ≤ allowable window !  Maturity parameters – successful conversation completed 3 times

!  … are stronger definitions of the Exit Criteria

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Defining the Accomplishment Criteria is the hard part. But they are the key to success in Event Based Scheduling, since they are the measures of “done”

+Primary Motivation – Avoid This Meeting!

!  Project management is not about forecasting the future

!  Project Management is about understanding risks that impact the future

!  Project Management is about making visible what “done” looks like

!  Project Management is about staying ahead of risk the curve

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Would you please elaborate on “Then Something Bad Happened”

+Nine Principles of Project Management

!  Systematic and integrative planning – maximum influence comes early in the project

!  Timely decisions adjusted to uncertainty – objectives first, the means to fulfill next

!  Isolation and Absorption of Risk – organize project elements to maintain stability and isolate undesired results

!  Leadership is Both Inward and Outward – leadership copes with uncertainty, management copes with complexity

!  Teamwork – emphasize cooperation rather than risk allocation

!  Overlapping Phases – pay great attention to pre–existing activities

!  Simple Procedures – prevent re–invention, contribute to cooperation, and establish internal stability

!  Intensive Communication – fit the intensity and mode of communication to the situation

!  Systematic Monitoring – identifying and correcting small problems is easy, identifying large problems is easy, correcting them is hard

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Event Based Scheduling is the basis for these Nine Principles (or any other favorite principles of project management)

+An Event Based Schedule

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Event

Significant Accomplishment

Accomplishment Criteria

Tasks

Here’s an example of a project that rolls out Microsoft Project Server™

+Our Working Example

!  Event – Phase A/B of the enterprise project server deployment is complete !  All the deliverables, activities to

deliver those deliverables, and the criteria by which those deliverables were measured have been completed

!  Significant Accomplishment – the Governance and Review Groups have been established

!  There are 2 “exit criteria” shown representing the “evidence” that these review groups have been established

!  The completion of these “exit criteria” is a clear and concise measure of progress

!  Accomplishment Criteria – Design Proof of Concept Complete !  Each AC is the “exit

criteria” for the collection of tasks (work) performed in the schedule and is the criteria for judging the completion and the resulting maturity of the work effort

!  Tasks !  Each task participates in the

completion of the AC !  No partial completion of the

task is allowed in the completion of the AC

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Constructing an Event Based Schedule is more work than just writing down the list of tasks and linking them in a network. That’s easy The result makes visible what Done looks like in ways no list of connected tasks ever can.

+We Did It On Time, On Budget, On Spec?

!  If we know ahead of time what done looks like …

!  … we measure can progress toward done in technical performance units of measure that describe the increasing maturity and value of the deliverables, rather than consumption of time and resources.

!  Then we can tell our customers – with a straight face – how much value we’ve created for their investment, how much work remains, an estimate of when we’ll be done, and an estimate of how much it will cost when we’re done.

!  If we use Event Based Scheduling, progress can be measured in terms understood by all the participants – consumer and supplier – in units of measure of “done”

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+Our Garage Project Is A Success …

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A Job Well Done And The Kids Are Happy, with …

+

!  Poinephobia - An abnormal, persistent fear of punishment

!  Enissophobia – a fear having committed an unpardonable sin or criticism

!  Decidophobia – a fear of making decisions

!  Atychipohbia – a fear of failure

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But first, what are those words in the sign two slides back?

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