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Vol. XIV Issue I - January 2012
Project Management eJournal
PM ADVISORY:
Schedule Estimation: Politics, Science, or Art?
Pragmatic considerations to scheduling pitfalls.
(Part two of a two part series)
By Dave Berry, PMP, Managing Director
and
Luciano Mascari, PMP, Managing Director
Abyss Program Management LLC
USA
1. Schedule Estimation: The Art Introduction
In part one of this series, we discussed multiple scheduling pitfalls. There are the political aspects which often force you to a situation where you have a fixed customer end date, a moving start date based on negotiations or budget authorizations, and political pressures forcing little or no risk budget, and no risk buffer in the schedule. The schedule tools available to you have multiple faults all erring on the side of optimistic schedules, which produce schedules that range from optimistic to unachievable. Some of these scheduling pitfalls are:
Path convergence not accounted for
Near critical path not highlighted
PERT and Monte Carlo simulation overly optimistic because of flawed assumptions
Makes no allowance for deteriorating problems early on in a project
Even the worst case scenario is overly optimistic
Makes no allowance for learning curves and ramp up of staff or does a poor job of it
Assumes funds and resources will be available as scheduled
When we look at more complex programs in the mid to large size, what do you do to avoid these issues and what do you do when you find yourself in the situation where you have these issues?
2. Schedule Estimation: The Art
Each program and program team is unique and there is no “One size fits all” solution. Key to develop a schedule and estimate for a program is planning the overall proposal effort up front and scaling the detail of your proposal to the time and resources you have available. If detail is lacking you have to limit the scope and bound with assumptions.
Apply sound governance techniques to manage upward with your management and client to ensure that your scope, schedule and cost are in alignment and well document with basis of estimate.
A detailed list of deliverables, documented within a deliverables base WBS, will give you basis to control and document scope. Assumptions will help to document what is not in scope.
Bottom up and top down estimates done by experienced SMEs will give you the best possible cost baseline. This technique has consistently proven to me more accurate than any other.
The resulting schedule built using the tools available, augmented by techniques to overcome their built in optimistic pitfalls will provide the best schedule estimate available.
In order to facilitate the discussion on the art of schedule estimation, we have decomposed the discussion into a series of key subtopics.
More…
To read entire paper (click here)
 About the Author Co-Author
Dave Berry, PMP is co-Managing Director of Abyss Program Management LLC, a Texas-based consultancy. Dave is an Information Technology & Program Management Executive experienced in consulting management, operations and troubled program recovery. During his career, he has analyzed situations, identified problems, proposed alternatives, and resolved situations for international companies in diverse industries. He has a unique ability to identify and capitalize on opportunities for organizational change and operational improvement. As a consultant, Dave managed the recovery of an enterprise e-commerce program for Sam’s Club, involving numerous companies and hundreds of engineers, bringing the program from chaos to one of control and predictable performance in six months. At Hewlett Packard Dave was responsible for the multi-billion dollar customer program portfolio worldwide, monitoring the health of the larger programs, conducting reviews and responding to escalations. He worked with all company and client stakeholders to analyze the situation, determine the issues, develop the recovery plans and work with the teams in the execution of those plans. His efforts resulted in roughly $50M in cost savings in 20 countries across 5 continents. As an operations executive, he went through mergers of Digital Equipment Corporation, Compaq and Hewlett Packard. He worked across all business units, functions and geographies, in developing and deploying many of the worldwide operational initiatives, to include such things as program reviews, account reviews, risk management initiatives and business governance initiatives. Dave was responsible for most of Hewlett Packard Service’s program management methodologies and standards and most of the Hewlett Packard’s custom program management training. At DEC Dave led the recovery of numerous large customer programs and managed DEC’s consulting business for the South Central USA. Dave began his career in software engineering in defense contracting, working on large custom command, control, communications and intelligence systems. He managed staffs as large as 140 software engineering professionals. He was instrumental, during this time, in the development of software engineering and software project management methodologies. He has a BS in Computer Science from Angelo State University and an MS in Project Management from George Washington University in the USA. He can be contacted at david.berry@abysspm.com.
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 About the Author Co-Author
Luciano Mascari, PMP is co-Managing Director, Abyss Program Management LLC, a Texas-based consultancy. Luciano is a management consulting and program management executive experienced in leading global cross-functional teams and organizations through the seas of change. He is a strategic and systems thinker experienced in leading product, system development, application deployments and organizational transformation efforts across diverse industries. During his career with Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), Compaq and Hewlett Packard (HP), he has a track record in leading and mentoring executive teams to bring about business process, business operations and product life cycle improvement in 19 countries on 5 continents. This involved launching change management programs, program management offices, new products, human resource services, consulting services and outsourcing. He has created best practice solutions to identify, institutionalize and manage change necessary to obtain long-term profitability for his clients both internal and external. He worked globally as a trusted advisor and mentor for program directors and executives, both internally and with clients to turn around troubled programs and launch new programs. He developed global project management initiatives, including; program management competency development, knowledge management, program reviews and troubled program recovery. He developed and delivered program management courses on program risk management, global program management, business analysis, consulting techniques and soft skills. At DEC’s Corporate International Engineering office, based in Geneva, Switzerland, Luciano brought about multinational business improvements, using emerging technology to model, analyze, automate and improve business processes, program management and team efficiency. This reduced the global engineering change order process cost by $250M per year. Luciano’s own transformation began as a leader in human resources and management consulting at DEC headquarters. His adult teaching and coaching experience began as a college psychology and sociology instructor. He applied this experience developing corporate workshops and coaching sessions on team building, problem solving, strategic thinking, change management, human resources, quality, problem solving techniques, etc. Luciano has a BA in Psychology from State University New York at Fredonia and a Masters Certificate in Project Management from George Washington University. He is a graduate of the Technology Managers’ Executive Program at Babson College in the USA. Luciano can be contacted at luciano.mascari@abysspm.com. Information about Abyss Program Management can be found at www.abysspm.com.
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