The Control Schedule process is one of the 42 project management processes described in the fourth edition PMBOK®. It’s one of the six Time knowledge area processes, and one of the ten Monitoring and Controlling processes. The primary purpose of this process is to update progress and manage any changes to the project schedule. The Project Management Plan contains the Schedule Baseline and the Schedule Management Plan which outlines how changes to the schedule are to be made. The most recent Project Schedule is compared to Work Performance Information in order to gauge how well the project is on-schedule. Comparing actual progress to planned progress is called Variance Analysis, and this leads to the output of Work Performance Measurements. With the mathematical calculations involved, Project Management Software and Scheduling Tools are useful for ease of making schedule changes. If the work needs to be performed over a shorter duration of time, Schedule Compression techniques such as crashing and fast-tracking may be needed. Adjusting Leads and Lags and Resource Leveling are other tools to adjust the schedule. When changes are needed, there will be Change Requests which go through the Perform Integrated Change Control process. Updates may also be needed to Organizational Process Assets, the Project Management Plan, and Project Documents. Also see the earlier postings of Change Requests (posted May 11, 2009), Project Management Plan (posted May 8, 2009), What-If Scenario Analysis (posted April 8, 2009), Schedule Compression (posted April 7, 2009), and Leads and Lags (posted March 20, 2009).
June 4, 2009
April 8, 2009
What-If Scenario Analysis
Thinking through potential outcomes, the What-If Scenario Analysis is a tool and technique of the Develop Schedule process and the Control Schedule process, both described in the fourth edition PMBOK®. This technique is used to estimate impacts to the project schedule if potential scenarios occur. This technique simply repeatedly asks “what if” a certain event should happen. It is useful to have more than one person’s perspective and ideas for this analysis. For example, Katy has two hours to bake three dozen cookies. She and her family are doing a What-If Scenario Analysis for this cookie baking project. “What if you burn the first batch?” asks her husband. They estimate that will extend the schedule an hour. “What if Dad is eating the cookies as fast as you can make them?” asks her daughter. They estimate that he’ll become full at a certain point, so it’ll extend the schedule half an hour. In summary, What-If Scenario Analysis simply estimates the effect that potential events may have.
March 20, 2009
Leads and Lags
Applying Leads and Lags is a tool and technique of the fourth edition PMBOK®’s Sequence Activities process; and Adjusting Leads and Lags is a tool and technique of the Control Schedule process. In order to manage a project schedule, a project manager should understand the simple concepts of leads and lags. Leads and lags are sometimes needed in order to more accurately describe the relationship among project activities. For example, the relationship between two project activities may be that one is the predecessor (it needs to be done before the successor activity) and the other activity is the successor (it occurs after the predecessor). If one activity is mixing cake ingredients and the other activity is placing the cake batter in the oven, then the relationship between these two activities is that mixing cake ingredients is the predecessor and placing the cake batter in the oven is the successor.
A lead allows the successor activity to begin more quickly, and a lag means there is a delay before the successor activity may begin. For example, the activity of turning the oven on may take less than 1 minute, and the successor activity of placing the cake batter in the oven may take less than 1 minute. The schedule would be flawed, however, if only a couple minutes were allowed for completing both turning on the oven and placing the cake batter in the oven. This is because there is a lag of the time it takes for the oven to heat to the desired temperature. We may need to add a lag of 15 minutes to account for the oven heating before we can place the cake batter inside the oven. However, even though the oven is not done heating, we could be mixing cake ingredients while it is heating, which gives us some lead time (the ability to start on this activity sooner).
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