SECOND LEVEL CHECKS

   

Project plan: schedule and effort analysis

A very effective way of finding out if a project has been planned out and thought through properly is to examine the distribution of effort and schedule over the life of the project. By comparing this distribution against that of previous completed projects, you can get a feeling for the accuracy or otherwise of the estimates in the plan being reviewed.

Obviously projects vary widely, from organization to organization and within organizations. Thus, the distribution of effort and schedule over the life of the project will also vary. However, finding that the distribution of the project being assessed is roughly comparable to that of a previously completed successful project will add to your confidence in the project plan being assessed. Conversely, finding a wide discrepancy between the two distributions will cause you to ask questions about the various estimates and how they were arrived at.

Obviously you can only carry out this analysis if you already have some distribution figures that you can use as a basis for comparison. Unfortunately, it is still something of a rarity in the IT industry to find this done with any degree of consistency. Thus, to make the most effective use of this test will require you to start recording distribution data on your completed projects. A form which makes it easy for you to do this, called an estimating score card (ESC), is described in Appendix 5.

In the absence of data of your own, you can still apply the analysis by using data supplied on the ESC shown in Figure 14.4. The comparison will not be as accurate, because the data are, by necessity, vanilla data culled from many different projects. However, they will enable you to get started with this analysis, and can be used until data of your own becomes available. The points to note are:


Figure 14.4.

graphics/14fig04.gif


  • The ESC covers all but two phases of the life cycle described in the section on WBS analysis. These are 8 Release Implementation and Acceptance and 10 Maintenance.

  • The first column of figures shows what proportion of the elapsed time of the project should go into each of the phases. Thus, for example, 26 percent of the elapsed time of the project would go into the requirements and design phases of a project.

  • The second column of figures shows what proportion of the project's effort should go into each of the project's phases.

Note

Just to repeat again that these are general-purpose figures and so should be treated with caution. Figures on the project being assessed may vary considerably from these, and could still be right because of the peculiar nature of that project.


Now, let's see a sample analysis. Let's say that the project plan that you are assessing contains the distribution of effort and schedule shown in Figure 14.5.


Figure 14.5.

graphics/14fig05.gif


If the author of the plan hasn't presented such a distribution, there are two choices open to you: either send it back and ask for it, or work it out yourself from the estimates of effort and schedule on the project plan's WBS and Gantt chart.

Figure 14.6 shows the distribution from the project plan compared against our general-purpose figures. Significant differences between the two sets of figures are discussed below.


Figure 14.6.

graphics/14fig06.gif


  1. There doesn't appear to be enough time or effort allowed in the project being assessed for requirements gathering and design.

  2. Too much of the project elapsed time and effort is being taken up by the actual writing of the software.

  3. Integration hasn't been allowed for at all.

  4. System test looks too high. Is this because not enough design will have been done and so lots of problems are expected?

These are questions to which you will have to get answers before you can give this project the go-ahead.

Project plan: Gantt chart analysis, critical path

As we mentioned earlier, the Gantt chart can be assessed at a number of different levels, each one becoming progressively more detailed than the previous one. The more detailed the assessment the more likely you are to catch potential flaws in the plan. However, more work is required on your part to do this detailed analysis. The level we will look at in this check is the critical path level.

The critical path is the shortest path through your project: in other words, it is the shortest time in which the project can complete. If any of the jobs on the critical path are delayed then the project will be delayed.

If you want to delve deeper into the project, without actually going through it job by job, then the critical path is both a convenient and a crucial way of doing exactly that.

To do this, the plan you are assessing should show clearly what the critical path is. PC-based project planning tools do this automatically. If the Gantt chart hasn't been done using such a tool, then the author of the plan needs to have worked out the critical path manually. If the plan doesn't show the critical path then you would be quite justified in sending it back, as the implication would be that the project manager hasn't thought it through.

Assuming that the Gantt chart does show the critical path, then for each job on the critical path you should check all of the following:

  • Does the amount of effort associated with the particular job seem reasonable?

  • Do the calendar days on which the job is due to be carried out make sense? For instance, have tasks been scheduled on public holidays or are unrealistic assumptions being made about what will get done over a holiday season like Christmas?

  • Does each job on the critical path have somebody's name against it “ not the name of an organization, but the person who will cause the work to be done?

The same comments made earlier about paralleling of tasks also apply here. Are tasks which actually have a dependency between them being run in parallel?

All of these tests applied to each task on the critical path will generate review comments of the plan.

Finally, if you wanted to, you could do a simple risk analysis using the four parameters from the First Law of Project Management:

  • functionality “ what is to be done

  • delivery date (or elapsed time) “ when the job must be done

  • effort “ how much work is involved

  • quality “ how well it is done

You would do this by asking yourself questions like:

  • Is this job doing something which is crucial to the project? If not, could it be put into a later delivery? (Functionality)

  • What happens if the job runs over? (Elapsed time)

  • Can the job be shortened ? (Elapsed time)

  • What happens if the job is bigger than we estimated? (Effort)

  • What would be the effect of adding more people? (Effort)

  • What happens if this job isn't done perfectly ? (Quality)

Project plan: resource loading analyses

These are two other checks to see whether the resource loading has been done correctly, and that the project takes account of some basic realities.

Check 3 is to see that people have not been scheduled more than 100 percent, that is, they are not scheduled to be in two places at once or working more than five days per week.

Check 4 examines whether the amount of people's effort that has been scheduled onto a particular project takes into account their other commitments. Thus if a person has been scheduled five days per week, then it means that they will be doing absolutely nothing else during their time on the project. Often people have several commitments and these have to be taken into account.

It should be said again that the use of a PC-based tool by the project manager makes checking all of these things very straightforward. In particular, a PC-based tool can supply resource loading charts showing how much work each person is scheduled to do, and when.

   


How To Run Successful Projects III. The Silver Bullet
How to Run Successful Projects III: The Silver Bullet (3rd Edition)
ISBN: 0201748061
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2001
Pages: 176

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