Practical Project Management

 Tight deadlines as a motivating tool

People generally have a tendency to work at the last moment and they keep postponing the things till they become urgent, and, since in CCPM, aggressive scheduling is adopted, therefore “tight deadlines as a motivating tool” is inbuilt in the plan itself & is there not only during the last moments but even at the initial stages of the project too. This feature keeps all the team members on their toes throughout the project.

 Activity Start: Moving from ‘ASAP approach’ to ‘resource optimization approach’

In CCPM, activities are not scheduled on the basis of ‘ASAP’ philosophy but on the basis of ‘Resource Optimization’ Philosophy. By doing this we are not only doing away with the disadvantages of ASAP approach e.g. the early cash outflows and the cost of interest thereon etc., but also we are being more logical by making the optimum use of the resources. This way we are being able to ensure that, to the extent possible, all the resources are uniformly used, and that they are neither under utilized nor over burdened at any point of time.

At the same time, we are also protecting the project from the disadvantages of not following ASAP approach e.g. delay into the task resulting in the delay in the project etc., by putting safety buffers at strategic positions.

Activity Finish: Moving from ‘due date syndrome’ to ‘ASAP’ approach

Although we do not follow the ASAP approach for starting any activity, but once the activity has started then we follow the ASAP approach and here we follow it so strictly that we don’t even give due dates to the resources. Although certain time limit is given, but the resources are motivated to finish the tasks before the given time limit on the basis of ASAP approach and their performance is evaluated accordingly.

With this approach, we are being able to save the buffer kept at the end of the chain and thereby making the project safer against the uncertainties in the subsequent activities.

Finishing any task in lesser time is not useless, but MUST.

In PERT/CPM, if we finish any non-critical task or sometime even critical task earlier than scheduled, it turns out to be useless, because the resources of the next task are not prepared to start early than their scheduled start and therefore this additional efficiency goes in vain.

However, in CCPM, since we don’t have any due dates therefore the next task has to start immediately after its predecessor finishes. Moreover, in CCPM we also have a system of communicating the resources of next task well in time as to when the preceding task is about to finish, so that they are prepared to start accordingly.

 Tasks are done when they are required to be done – neither earlier nor later

In CCPM, the tasks are scheduled from end to backwards, and for starting the tasks, we don’t follow the ASAP approach, they are scheduled as late as possible after taking into account the resource contention and the safety buffers.

This results in the optimum utilization of resources, because the tasks are scheduled neither before time to disturb our cash outflows, nor too late to disturb our project completion date and that is precisely what is expected of any good project management technique.

Optimum use of slack by strategic placement of safety buffers

In PERT/CPM we generally have the slacks in all non-critical activities which often get wasted because of ‘Parkinson’s Law’, and in a way we are not able to make best use of that slack, however, in case of CCPM, these slacks are taken out of all the activities and these are kept at the strategic positions in the form of feeding buffers at the points where non-critical chains join the critical chain to avoid the cascading affect of delay in non-critical activities on the critical chain.

Similarly, the safety buffer is also put between the end of the critical chain and the project completion date to protect the project completion time from any delay in the activities of critical chain.

Incorporation of the best of both ‘PERT/CPM’ as well as ‘Resource Allocation’ Techniques

In CCPM, we make the best use of both PERT/CPM as well as ‘Resource Allocation’ by addressing the issues of both ‘Time’ as well as ‘Resource’. In CCPM, we not only reduce the task duration to make the schedule more aggressive for the reasons already explained above, but also include the concept of ‘Resource allocation’ & that too in a more refined way, to make sure that the resources are focused on one task at a time, and therefore, we are adopting a holistic approach to address both the critical inputs of a project simultaneously.

Feeding buffers to distinguish & in turn maintain the importance of critical chain over non-critical chains.

As far as non-critical tasks are concerned, we do not want to micro manage them to the degree we do the critical tasks with the resource availability alerts. At the same time, we do want to assure that if things go wrong in the non-critical, we don’t want them to impinge the ability of critical tasks to stay on track.

The traditional approach is to start these tasks as early as possible & hope that the slack is enough to absorb the variability. It might, but then again, it might not.

In CCPM, we concentrate the safety associated with chains of non-critical tasks as a buffer protecting the start of the critical chain task they feed into and therefore, the term, “feeding buffers”.

The feeding, non-critical tasks are two buffers away from impacting the project promise. The critical chain, on the other hand, has just one buffer at its end and therefore solicits more focused attention, thanks to feeding buffers, which not only distinguishes but also maintains the importance of critical chain over non-critical chains.

Uncertainties are not taken as surprise, but are made the part of plan itself.

“Whatever can go wrong, will.” – Murphy’s Law

Uncertainty is one of the main reasons why we need project management. Unfortunately, all the traditional project management techniques still take uncertainty as a surprise, because none of them plan for it, at least not for the critical activities.

However, in CCPM, we account for uncertainties in the plan itself and we keep the safety buffers to deal with such uncertainties only. Unlike all the traditional techniques, in CCPM, we keep buffers both for critical as well as for non-critical activities, and what is more, the buffer is consumed only when there is an uncertainty in any particular activity and if some activity does not happen to come across any uncertainty then there will be no wastage of buffer, and this will provide more safety to the subsequent activities. 

Resource contention is also accounted for in the plan itself

One must realize that resource dependency is as real as task dependency when determining what is critical for the project. And it is for this reason, that in CCPM, we account for resource contention and we schedule the tasks not only by just keeping in mind their predecessor tasks, but also by the fact that the required resources for that particular task should remain available during the time the task has been scheduled.

In the critical chain world, there are two kinds of resources; resources that perform critical tasks and resources that perform non-critical tasks. The ones we really have to worry about in this context are the critical chain tasks, since they most directly determine how long the project will take.

In CCPM, we make sure that critical chain resources are available when the preceding task is done, without relying on fixed due dates. And this is ensured by a system wherein the resources are required to provide the regular, periodic updates of their current estimate of the time to complete their current task, so that the resources of the next task can be given advance alerts from time to time, which help them prepare themselves to start the task as soon as the preceding task is finished.

Performance evaluation by the rate of consumption of buffer by individual tasks

The critical chain methodology requires that the schedule be built with only the time to do the work without safety. This is the time we expect the work to take if allowed to focus a full sustainable level of effort on it and if there are no significant problems. We usually describe this estimate in terms of having a 50% confidence level and while the resources are expected to strive for these ‘target durations’, these are not considered as commitments.

However, at the same time, as the tasks are completed, we know how much they have eaten into or replenished the buffers. Because we are now getting updated estimates of time-to-completion from currently active tasks, we can stay on top of how much of the buffers are consumed in an ongoing fashion. After taking into consideration the uncertain, significant and unavoidable problems, the consumption of buffer by individual tasks can be treated as a benchmark for performance evaluation for the respective tasks and the resources working thereupon.

Student’s syndrome is done away with.

Hey! Why are you bothering me today?, we still have enough time left to finish it.

This is the general human tendency prevailing even in many of the persons involved in a project, who think that either the time allotted for any given task is too much or that they are smart enough to finish the given task in a time much less than allotted, and therefore they start the task at later stage, and this particular phenomenon is known as ‘Student’s Syndrome’. 

In a project having conservative scheduling, it is observed that around first two-third of the activity time consumes only one-third of the efforts of the resources who tend to put maximum, almost two-third, of their efforts during last one-third of the time.

Although one might be very confident of finishing the task in the last moment, but then, one always runs a risk of overrunning the scheduled time because of any unexpected problem which might arise during the course of the progress of the task. Secondly, if one is to put in one’s optimum efforts only during the later stage of the task, then the very purpose of making conservative estimates, keeping the safety in task itself, and starting the task on ASAP basis etc., gets defeated.

Needless to say, that most of these resources land up into lots of problems in finishing the task in that small span of time and task gets delayed resulting into the project delay.

Since in CCPM, scheduling is done very aggressively leaving no extra time to relax and therefore, the so called ‘Student’s syndrome’ is done away with. 

Conclusion

We have been witnessing in almost all the traditional project management techniques a number of problems like :

a) Existence of Murphy’s Law, according to which “whatever can go wrong, will.”

b) Existence of Parkinson’s Law, according to which, “Work expands to fill (and often exceed) the time allowed”,

c) Existence of Student’s Syndrome according to which most people have a tendency to wait until tasks get really urgent before they work on them.

d) Conservative and non-risk taking attitude of the people,

e) People showing more structured, deadline-oriented attitude,

f) Tendency of people keeping many tasks at their hand at any given point of time, and treating this feature as a measure of their importance in the organization etc.

Coincidently, most of these problems can be traced back to one common problem i.e. the problem in the attitude of the people working on the project; and if one looks for to have the solutions to all the above mentioned problems, one can find it only in one technique and that is none other but the ‘Critical Chain Project Management’, which successfully addresses not only the technical loopholes prevailing in the traditional techniques but also the attitudinal problems of the human beings associated with the project.

In fact, it shall not be an exaggeration to say that, unlike all other traditional techniques, CCPM is the only technique which in real sense, is a ‘management’ technique because this technique actually makes the optimum utilization of the resources, which is precisely what the definition of management is. 

References -

1.      Leach, Lawrence P. Critical Chain Project Management (2nd Edition) (© 2005 ARTECH HOUSE, INC., USA) (Figure 4.1- Key features of critical-chain solution deliver performance to the project-system requirements.)

2.      Meredith, Jack R. & Mantel, Samuel J. Project Management (Fourth Edition) John Wiley & Sons

3.      Website references

a. http://pqa.net/

b. http://www.answers.com/topic/critical-chain

c. http://www.decisioneering.com/

d. http://www.focusedperformance.com/

e. http://www.npd-solutions.com/

f.  http://www.thoughtwarepeople.com/

g. http://www.tocc.com/

Surendra Singh Rajpurohit (c) 2005

Sr. Lecturer
Aravali Institute of Management
‘Marwar Bhawan’ Polo No. 2, Paota, Jodhpur – 342006 (Rajasthan) INDIA
Tel: +91 291 2542235, Mob. : +91 94144 04658, Fax: +91 291 2543600
E-mail- This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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