My personal requirements for project planning
Throughout my career, I have developed my own standards for the requirements I set for project planning. These requirements are highly dependent on the purpose, usefulness, and necessity of the project planning. The ‘Practice Standard for Scheduling' of the PMI provides 103 project planning components. Project planning components are the attributes or data elements assigned to an activity. The 103 components are divided into five categories. These are:
- CRC (36 pieces): These are core components for every schedule.
- RRC (11 pieces); resource management components.
- ERC (9 pieces); components for Earned Value Management (EVM).
- KRC (7 pieces); risk management components.
- O (40 pieces); optional components.
Category selection for project planning
How do you choose to use these categories and their components?
Categorie 1: Core Required Components (CRC)
These are all the components you need to make a project schedule in a critical path network (36 pcs). This applies to all projects, regardless of size or complexity.
Categorie 2: Resource Required Components (RRC)
If you choose to design a project schedule where the available and required resources are central, you need the following eleven additional components:
- resource calendar;
- activity resource actual quantity;
- activity resource total quantity;
- project resource actual quantity;
- project resource total quantity;
- resource assignment;
- resource availability;
- resource description;
- resource ID;
- resource library/dictionary;
- resource type.
As you can see, these components are suitable when the project's requirements are resource-loaded. Or rather if there are histograms and s-curves from the project planning must be distilled.
Categorie 3: Earned value management (ERC)
You need these nine components if you would like to apply 'Earned Value Management' analyses to monitor progress and determine the status of the project:
- activity actual cost;
- budget at completion (BAC);
- control account ID;
- earned value (EV);
- estimate at completion (EAC);
- estimate to completion (ETC);
- planned value;
- WBS ID;
- work package identifier.
Earned Value Management (EVM) is a project management system that provides for the timely generation of accurate, consistent, reliable and predictable management information that reflects the performance of a project at all levels. This method is most used for cost information but can also be used to control resources.
Category 4: Risk requirements components (KRC)
These seven components are necessary for designing and controlling a project planning where risk management is a prerequisite.
- activity cumulative probability risk distribution;
- activity most likely duration;
- activity optimistic duration;
- activity pessimistic duration;
- activity risk criticality index;
- risk ID;
- probability risk distribution.
Categories 5: O
These are optional attributes that are not absolutely necessary but that make the job easier.
Now that we've determined the categories, my own intrinsic requirements for a project schedule can be per category.
Categorie 1: Core Required Components (CRC)
For a standard project schedule:
- Milestones and other key dates should be clear.
- Planning will be divided into work packages.
- Planning will be created in a planning tool suitable for a critical path network method.
- The earliest start date and the last start date will be determined for each activity.
- All tasks will have a unique identifier, a short description, previous and subsequent activities, a duration, an earliest and last start date, a readiness date, and finally, the free and total clearance.
- Planning will be detailed in such a way that the work can be adequately planned, carried out, and monitored.
- The activities should not exceed 28 days. Activities shorter than one week should be limited. This is to register and process the progress,not to be unnecessarily prolonged.
- There should be no loose activities, and there should be no leads and lags which the dynamic could counteract or influence the character of the plans.
- Planning will be clear in the critical path.
- Stages, sections, or partsserve in the planning and are clearly visible.
- The earliest and last start date of each phase/section/part should be visible.
- Planning will clearly indicate which work schedules are applied and were.
- Non-working holidays should be included in the planning.
- Purchase periods for the purchase and delivery of the most important materials and equipment should be included in the planningto be processed.
- Approval and conformity with the clientserve clearly in the planning to be appointed and scheduled.
- It must be clearly indicated when consent of the sponsor is necessary to be able to continue.
- Dates on which information from the client is needed must be visible in the planning.
Categories 2: Resource Required Components (RRC)
For resource planning:
- Planning must be provided with all resources necessary for the realization of any activity.
Categorie 3: Earned Value Planning
- All activities must be priced, and the sum of all activities will be the total contract price. This is necessary to determine the cash flow.
Category 4: Risk planning
- Planning will be designed in such a way as to allow sufficient time for risks and uncertainties during work and due to weather conditions.
Verification of the Technical requirements for a project planning
Now that we understand the requirements of project planning, the next question is: how are you going to check and verify the requirements of a project schedule? We also call this the 'health check' of the project planning. Reliable and predictable project schedules are one of the critical factors for the successful execution of a project. Research has shown that there is a relationship between the quality of a project schedule and the result of the executed project. The better the planning, the better the execution.
Defining 'good planning'' is not so simple, however, but the US Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) designed a stand. As a project schedule meets these requirements, you can say that the project schedule is well-built.
DCMA 14 Points Assessment
This standard consists of the 'DCMA 14 Points Assessment', and the core of these 14 points can be found below. Where it is realistic, I will use the Dutch translation, but this is not always useful because these terms are embedded in the English jargon of the planner.
1. Logic
Description: the number of activities without a predecessor and a successor should not be more than 5% of the total. My own tolerance is zero: no activities without a predecessor and a successor.
2. Leads
Description: This test identifies the leads in the project planning process. DCMA, like me, has zero tolerance: no leads.
3. Lags
Description: the total number of activities with an S-S relationship with a lag should not be more than 5%. I can agree with this to a certain extent, but then an F-F relationship must also be added.
4. F-S-Relations
Description: at least 90% of all relationships must be F-S. The total of all other relationship types should not exceed 10%.
5. Hard constraints
Description: the number of activities with limitations may not exceed 5% of the total, and enforced restrictions may not be applied.
6. High float
Description: the number of activities with a float of 2 months (44 working days) or more should not exceed 5%.
7. Negative float
Description: no activities are allowed with a float of less than 0 days. A negative float indicates that we are somewhere in the project planning Running behind schedule or that we are forced to restrict have recorded. These are not allowed because they give an unreliable picture.
8. High duration
Description: the total number of activities with an activity duration of 2 months (44 working days) should not exceed 5%. For 'Rolling Wave' schedules and for the delivery times of materials and machines, I can endorse this, but for other activities, my tolerance is 4 weeks (or 20 working days).
9. Invalid dates
Description: No invalid dates must appear in the schedule. These can be 'out of sequence' activities (OOS) or activities that are ready in the future. These OOS activities account for a large proportion of incorrect calculations of the dates in the planning. These must not occur and must be corrected at all times. This also applies to activities that have been reported ready in the future.
10. Resources
Description: all activities that are not yet ready must be resourced (uren of euros).
11. Missed activities
Description: the number of activities 'slipping' from the baseline should not exceed 5% of the total. These slipped activities are behind the original time baseline and are a good indication of the extent to which the project is on schedule running.
12. Critical path test
Description: This test evaluates the critical path network and, more specifically, the critical path. The test consists of a series of 'What-If' analyses. The goal is to verify that the critical path is actually running as intended.
13. Critical path length index (CPLI)
Description: the critical path index calculates how efficiently the progress of the project is relative to the original time baseline. An outcome equal to or greater than 1 tells that the project is making good progress and is progressing efficiently. An outcome of less than 1 tells that there are problems with the progress of the project and that it will be difficult to complete the project on time. DCMA has a tolerance of 0.95. The formula we use for this is as follows:
CPLI = (CPL +/- Float) / CPL
CPL is the total length of the critical path (in days) of the project. The float (this can be a positive or negative float) is the number of days we have as slack (negative or positive) between the mandatory end date of the project and the projected end date.
An example:
Let's assume that we are running a project with a total length of 180 days and that the project is 20 days behind schedule. This is then a negative float of 20 days.
→ CPLI = (180 - 20)/ 180 = 160/180 = 0.889
Another example:
Let's assume that the total length of the project is 100 days and that the positive float is 20 days.
→ CPLI = (100 + 20)/ 100 = 120/100 = 1.2
14. Baseline Execution Index (BEI)
Description: the calculation of the Baseline Execution Index (BEI). The BEI is the ratio between the number of activities that are ready in relation to the number of activities that should have been completed. If the ratio is greater than or equal to 1.0, this is an indication that the project is going well. A ratio of less than 1 is an important indication that the end date of the project is in jeopardy. DCMA has a tolerance of 0.95.
DCMA 14 Points Assessment
You could do the test by calculating it per component. It is better to use special software for this. If you Google, you can see some of them. I prefer the XER Toolkit. This software gives a lot of information about the health of project planning and also about the DCMA 14 Points Assessment.
DCMA 14 Points Assessment Summary
Not all experts agree that the DCMA 14 Points Assessment the best way is to improve the quality of a project schedule to test. My experience is that this method offers a great guarantee to achieve high-quality project planning.
Summary tools and techniques
In summary, we can say that there are many tools and techniques to ensure good and reliable project planning.
Jan van den Berg
