Finishing Projects Fast
James R. Burns
Professor of Operations
Management and Information
Technology
Texas Tech University
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Outline--Sources
Generalities
Goldratt concepts
Mascitelli concepts
McCONNELL concepts
Kerzner concepts
Maturity concepts
Other sources
Presentation by James R. Burns
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Goal:
Make some suggestions as to how
projects can be completed fast and
frugally
Presentation by James R. Burns
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Why Projects????
A way to discretize and plan work that
Enables comparisons among projects
Enables the work to be:
formally defined
formally planned
formally budgeted
formally executed
formally controlled
Formally finished
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Most firms
Recognize project management to be a core
competence today
Have established project management
centers of excellence for training and
development of project managers and project
management careers
Encourage their employees to propose
project initiatives with simple one-page
statements of work
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Rationale for Reducing Project Duration
Time Is Money: Cost-Time Tradeoffs
Reducing the time of a critical activity usually
incurs additional direct costs.
Cost-time solutions focus on reducing (crashing)
activities on the critical path to shorten overall
duration of the project.
Reasons for imposed project duration dates:
Time-to-market pressures
Unforeseen delays
Incentive contracts (bonuses for early completion)
Imposed deadlines and contract commitments
Overhead and public goodwill costs
Pressure to move resources to other projects
9–6
Options for Accelerating
Project Completion
Resources Not
Constrained
Adding resources
Fast-tracking
Outsourcing project
work
Critical-chain
Scheduling overtime
Establishing a core
project team
Do it twice—fast and
then correctly
9–7
Resources
Constrained
Reducing project
scope
Compromise quality
The Stages in the Project
Management Lifecycle
Conceptualization &
Definition
Planning &
Budgeting
Executing &
Controlling
Termination &
Closure
The product the
project is to produce
is defined here
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Notes on shortening project
durations
(Most of this must be done in the Planning
and Budgeting stage)
Crashing
Reducing the duration of tasks on the critical path
by adding resources
Fast-tracking
Starting tasks sooner
Checking for parallelism opportunities
in the schedule
Pull as much work off of the critical path as you
can
Be aware of critical chain issues
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More Tips on shortening
project durations
REUSE, REUSE, REUSE
Do it right the first time
Eliminate non-value-added work
activities
Make projects lean
Avoid changes to requirements
But what if the requirements are unstable??
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Knowledge Reuse…
Requirements Reuse
Classification of projects
Mapped/Programmed Projects-Everything is driven by and proceeds
from the requirements
Project Plan
Functional Specification
Design Document
Code
Tests and Test Documentation
ALL OF WHICH CAN BE REUSED
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The Quality View on FAST
projects:
The further down the lifecycle the
defects are found, the more expensive
and time consuming they are to fix.
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The problem of Complexity
In the early days of simpler code, it
used to take a day or less to fix a bug
Now, with greatly increased code
complexity, it takes weeks sometimes.
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Avoid changes to
requirements
If possible freeze requirements during
execution and control stage
Changing requirements greatly
increases total time and cost
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Lean Project Management
Customer-perceived value should drive
everything
What is the value proposition??
If we were to advertise in the WSJ that we
have twice as many walkthroughs as our
closest competition, would that garner any
additional customers for us?
Remove what does not add value
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Principles of Lean Concepts
Applied to Projects
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Precisely specify the value of the project
Identify the value stream for each project
Allow value to flow without interruptions
Let the customer pull value from the
project team
Continuously pursue perfection
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Which of the following adds
value?
Conducting a weekly team coordination
Hunting for needed information
Presenting Project status to upper
management
Creating formal project documents
Gaining multiple approvals for a project
document
Waiting in queues for available resources
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Time Batching--Another Time
Waster
Analysis paralysis
Approval cycles
Formal document release
Regularly scheduled meetings
Planning cycles
Work queues
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More techniques for
shortening projects
Scrub the requirements during or prior to the
planning and budgeting stage
Remove from the requirements those items that add
little or no value
Remember the Pareto principle—80% of the value
comes from 20% of the functionality
REMOVE SAFETY—GOLDRATT
Resist multitasking and student
syndrome
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Safety
Extra time placed in an estimated task time
Remove safety and put it in a time buffer at
the end of the project
Safety, when its buried in the tasks of the
project, is a bad thing because of….
Multitasking, also a bad thing
Student syndrome
Task dependencies
Can’t be passed along or accumulated
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Everybody overestimates the
time required to do their task
According to Goldratt
(This is called SAFETY, as we said)
Does anybody want to talk about how
much safety they put into their
estimates?
Is this true in software development?
It is if you have an expert doing the
estimating, who really knows how long
it will take him
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What happens after that--a
possible scenario
The team leader adds safety time to the
task to cover his responsibilities
The project leader adds more safety
time
The project manager may add still more
safety time
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Implication>>>
Most of the time we have built into our
projects is …..
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The project manager must stay
focused
Or the project will not be finished on time,
within budget
This means applying the Pareto principle
80% of the benefit comes from 20% of the activities
By the time progress reports indicate
something is wrong, its usually too late
Progress reports tell you that 90% of the
project is finished in 90% of the required
time.
However, another equal period of time is
required to complete the remaining “10%,” in
many cases
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It is hard to stay focused
when:
There are too many project paths ongoing, in parallel
There are many critical or near critical
paths
There are many projects being
managed concurrently
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Measurements are a major
problem with projects
Measurements should induce the parts to do
what is good for the system as a whole
Measurements should direct managers to the
point that needs their attention
So often it occurs that we measure the wrong
thing.
The wrong measure leads to wrong behavior
Tell me how you measure me and I will show you
how I behave
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Solutions
Take the safety out of the individual
tasks and put it at the end of the critical
path in the time buffer, called a project
buffer
This means making the tasks roughly
50-60% as long as they would
otherwise be.
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More solutions
At the point where each feeding path intersects
with the critical path, place another time buffer,
called a feeding buffer. The feeding buffer protects
the critical path from delays occurring in the
corresponding non-critical paths.
When resources are needed on the critical path,
these resources are advised ahead of time exactly
when they must make themselves available. When
that time comes, they must drop everything else
and do the required critical tasks.
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Measurement solutions
Measure progress only on the critical
path; what percent of the critical path
we have already completed. This is all
we care about!!
Have a project leader measure progress
on a non critical path in terms of
unused buffer days
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Shrinking the task time:
Effects
There is less procrastination
There is much more focus
There is less multitasking
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More Suggestions
Put your “BEST” people on the critical
path
Watch out for critical chains—tasks
performed by people working both on
and off the critical path
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What are the ramifications of
a delayed software product,
intended for commercial sale?
Less market share
Less profit; maybe no profit
Lower analyst profit expectations
Declining share price
Out of business?
How many firms has Microsoft driven out of
business?
Ask Philippe Khan (founder of Borland) what the
implications of getting a product late to the
marketplace are
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Reducing Project Duration
to Reduce Project Cost
Identifying direct costs to reduce project time
Gather information about direct and indirect
costs of specific project durations.
Search critical activities for lowest direct-cost
activities to shorten project duration.
Compute total costs for specific durations and
compare to benefits of reducing project time.
9–44
What about getting products
late to the market?
1. If the product is 6 months late, it is assumed to have missed
35% of market share
2. Tech firms usually assume that profits lost from reduced
market share will more than justify any additional costs
entailed in reducing time to market
1. Indeed, this is assumed without any formal analysis
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What is the deal with indirect
costs??
1. They can be 45% to 90% of total costs, where
total costs = indirect costs + direct costs
2. Indirect costs = overhead costs
1. TTU’s overhead rate is 50% of total costs
3. Direct costs = labor and material costs that are a
function of the number of products or services
rendered
4. Whenever your crash costs per day are less than
your indirect costs per day, you should be saving
money, in addition to time
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Project Cost–Duration Graph
FIGURE 9.1
9–47
Constructing a Project Cost–
Duration Graph
Find total direct costs for
selected project durations.
Find total indirect costs for
selected project durations.
Sum direct and indirect costs
for these selected project
durations.
Compare additional cost
alternatives for benefits.
9–48
Constructing a Project Cost–
Duration Graph
Determining Activities to Shorten
Shorten the activities with the smallest increase in
cost per unit of time.
Assumptions:
The cost relationship is linear.
Normal time assumes low-cost, efficient
methods to complete the activity.
Crash time represents a limit—the greatest time
reduction possible under realistic conditions.
Slope represents a constant cost per unit of time.
All accelerations must occur within the normal
and crash times.
9–49
Activity Graph
FIGURE 9.2
9–50
Cost–Duration Trade-off Example
FIGURE 9.3
9–51
Cost–Duration Trade-off Example (cont’d)
FIGURE 9.3 (cont’d)
9–52
Cost–Duration Trade-off Example (cont’d)
FIGURE 9.4
9–53
Cost–Duration Trade-off Example (cont’d)
FIGURE 9.4 (cont’d)
9–54
Summary Costs by Duration
FIGURE 9.5
9–55
Project Cost–Duration Graph
FIGURE 9.6
9–56
Practical Considerations
Using the Project Cost–Duration Graph
Crash Times
Linearity Assumption
Choice of Activities to Crash Revisited
Time Reduction Decisions and Sensitivity
9–57
What if Cost, Not Time Is the
Issue?
Commonly Used Options for Cutting
Costs
Reduce project scope
Have owner take on more responsibility
Outsourcing project activities or even the
entire project
Brainstorming cost savings options
9–58
Key Terms
Crashing
Crash point
Crash time
Direct costs
Fast-tracking
Indirect costs
Outsourcing
Project cost–duration graph
9–59
Project Priority Matrix: Whitbread Project
FIGURE 9.6
9–60
What about Procurement
Most firms enter into LOSE/LOSE Strategies
A fixed-price lowest bidder contract is LOSE/LOSE
Strategy
This forces Contractors to under bid their
costs, hoping to make it back on the changes
to the requirements that the customer will
have to pay for
Instead, Contractors should be induced to
deliver product on time, with as much
functionality as possible
How would you do this?
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