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| Typical Challenges & Symptom with Projects | National Average (1998)* |
|---|---|
| Late | Only 44% of all projects finish on schedule or before. The
rest tend to be very late. On average, projects are 222% longer than planned. |
| Over budget | By 189% |
| Fall short of planned technical content | 70% of projects |
| Canceled before finished | 30% of projects |
| Day-to-day chaos & frustrations | Epidemic |
| No reliable way to measure project status | Until it's too late |
* As reported in a national survey conducted by The Standish Group
Project Management was now essential to our changing and growing economy, and produced many excellent results over the years (ie. the Empire State Building was constructed in less than a year with brand new technology, steel girder skeleton). However, as shown above, there was much room for improvement.
In the late 1950's, Admiral Raborn of the U.S. Navy needed the Polaris
missile program up and flying as quickly as possible due to the perceived
threat of a "missile gap" between the U.S. and Russia. Traditional
project management wasn't enough to ensure the safety of the nation.
The problem was solved with the help of Willard Fazar's PERT (Program
Evaluation and Review Technique). PERT became the mandatory
requirement of all US Navy projects.
After PERT, nothing much happened in Project Management for the next 45 years.
Yes, there was some work done on Earned Value, and fancy calculations, and much tweaking, but none of it resulted in significant change, nor consensus. Most of it further complicated the situation, until 1997.
Dr. Eli Goldratt (famous for `The Goal', a world-wide best seller on the Theory of Constraints, TOC) finally took time out from his busy schedule of helping organizations improve their profitability and productivity, to write a book about what he had accomplished and a new way of looking at Project Management through TOC: Critical Chain.
Dr. Goldratt's book outlines the application of Theory of Constraints to a project management environment.
Saturn Car Company needed no further prompting. They had hundreds of new dealerships to construct, and needed them as quickly as possible, and as cheaply as possible. However, the end results (ie. the dealerships) had to reflect the proper image for the company (ie. quality & reliability). Saturn applied Critical Chain project management techniques to the dealership building program with phenomenal success. Fortunately, each dealership construction project needed more or less the same steps and outcomes. Unlike most projects which have a lot of "We'll see when we get there", re-scheduling, fine tuning, and shifting priorities, the dealerships were built in a "cookie cutter" fashion, with minimal differences; virtually all the same using the same schedule. This cookie cutter, repetitive project could be manually scheduled with Critical Chain Theory.
While the case of Saturn dealership construction described above was difficult enough, most of us have more complicated, dynamic situations than building one dealership at one construction site. We have project teams, experts, management, and facilities spread across continents instead of just a 1 acre construction site. Fortunately (I keep trying to convince myself), we have computers, software, and e-mail with instantaneous, world-wide communications through the internet.
Most project management software available today is a fancy Windows interface on the same algorithms that were used in the Polaris Missle program in the 1950's. However, there are some exceptions. There is now excellent software available to help schedule projects using the CCPM methodology. Some of these are software modules that run together with your existing software, such as Microsoft Project.
PQA has conducted a test drive of the major project management software on the market today. For a brief review of our results, see Project Management Software Review
Many of today's project management software are "Internet Savvy". They will automatically upload the data so that anyone in the world with a standard browser can:
- Input the most recent status of their assigned tasks,
- Find out how the overall project is doing, and
- Be informed of any delays or advances in the schedule.
- Stay "in the loop" for their project role, while working independently at a remote site.
Just as the fax machine started a fundamental shift in how we all do
business, this was further accelerated by e-mail and "info surfing". The
"do" side that projects are concerned with has been lingering at the same,
snail pace as in the 1950's. For construction work, we now see night
floodlights and winter construction to try and achieve faster cycle time.
I believe the pace of business must accelerate even more. There is
huge pressure to do so. But the fragile people, and our unaided
capabilities are already stretched to the breaking point, and beyond.
Consider CCPM for project managers to be the same as the telescope for
the astronomer, the microscope for the pathologist, and the hearing aid
for the deaf. CCPM allows us to achieve even greater speed, cost,
and effectiveness than we are otherwise able to achieve by ourselves.
Remember,
| 1980's were about | Quality |
| 1990's were all about | Globalization |
| 2000's are only about | Velocity |
Fasten your seatbelts and use CCPM to:
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