Balanced Scorecards are widely used among business and industry, governments and non-profit organizations. However, they are not so much discussed within Project Management and Project Controls, in particular.So, you might wonder why Primaned is writing about them?
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There are numerous reasons why a schedule should meet certain quality criteria. Have a look at our blogpost “Schedule Quality – Technical Requirements” for the details. One of the more widely spread tests to assess the (technical) quality of a schedule is the DCMA 14-Point Schedule Assessment.
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Are you interested in reducing waste as a result of better planning? How about creating a continuous work flow which helps you meet your project’s deadline and reduces your waste? It is neither rocket science nor magic, achieving these goals is simpler than you think. In fact, whenever I explain to managers about takt time planning, I always feel their confusion, as if they are still waiting to hear something new that ‘’they do not know’’. Hence, the concept is really familiar to us, however many lack a systematic approach to implement it.
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Introduction
Critical Path Method (CPM) schedules have been ruling the world of projects for a long time. Considering the benefits of CPM, that is quite understandable, isn’t it?
They provide the bigger picture of the project and allow for scenario and what-if-analyses, risk analyses, delay analyses and critical path analyses. They are useful for assessing the resource needs, they provide the team with due dates for ordering long lead items and they allow to include contingencies for risks.
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Do you feel your budgeting process has failed from the start of your project? Have you learned that you overbudgeted or underbudgeted the activities in your performance measurement baseline (PMB)? Are you willing to take your Earned Value Analysis (EVA) to the next level? Then this is a blog post for you.
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Who owns the float has been a predominant discussion within project controls for decades. And it still is. However, to correctly address this question, the difference between Total Float and Time Contingency (or a time buffer) needs to be fully understood. We hope this blog post will help in clarifying the differences.
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The Primaned team has written quite some blog posts about Oracle Prime Projects over the last couple of months. We did not hide that we thought it might very well be the PM tool of the future. Our enthusiasm is based on the comprehensiveness of the tool and its alignment with our vision on integrated project controls. It is so much more than a scheduling engine. When introducing the tool to clients and prospects, the reception is very good and our enthusiasm seems to be shared. However, mainly because of the nature of our client base, there is one thing they all want to know and ask us time and again.
How good is its scheduling compared to my good old Primavera P6?
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Now we’ve learned the basics of Earned Value Management calculations (see this blog), it’s time to introduce a new metric to define our project’s health. As you’ve noticed all previous metrics and parameters were either percental (CPI, SPI, TCPI) or monetary/unitary (CV, SV). But what does a schedule variance of € 10.000 tell us? First, a delay expressed in monetary units is somewhat strange. Second, we will show later in this blog post that this metric is subject to a major fallacy. It is to be replaced with a more comprehensive one. Time for a change.
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A schedule risk analysis is a powerful tool to gain insight into the influence of risks and uncertainties on the cost and duration of a project.
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Duration and Calendar Duration, Time and Units/Time explained, P6 basic.
Time is of the essence. Both in project control and in our personal lives. As we’ve been dealing with time since childhood, you would assume we have learned to communicate on it effectively and unambiguously. But when someone says: “this activity is going to take 48 hours” you might take that as 2 days while he might’ve meant it will take two persons 3 8-hour-working days to complete.
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