Re: Managing Techpubs projects

[Elna Tymes <etymes -at- LTS -dot- COM>]

Mark Dempsey wrote:

> I just attended a project management class in which the instructor said
> percent done was a useless concept, and a deceptive
> over-simplification.  He suggests as an alternative:
> Resources: Money, people, equipment, etc.
> Scope: Size, quality, etc.
> Schedule: Time constraints

I've long fumed over the limitations of the percent-completed calculations of
MS Project and others like it - when things change midstream, as they often do,
it's really difficult to quantify what's done and what still has to be done.

The one thing that usually does stay put is the schedule, or at least the
delivery part of it. And that can usually be quantified as days/weeks
completed.  If you have divided the project into milestones, you can usually
space the milestones out along the schedule and thus get a quantifiable idea of
where you are. However, there is a strong tendency in doc projects for the
Powers That Be, whoever they are, to add another review, or to extend or change
the scope of the project, or for other gotchas to creep in.  Which makes your
linear schedule projections irrelevant.

When we write proposals, we cover the RSS items up front in the assumptions,
and add some weasel-words to point out that, if conditions in our assumptions
aren't met, the schedule will likely suffer.  We also try to point out that, in
our experience, the more reviews the docs have to go through, the less likely
you are to have both document integrity and a project delivered on time. But
that admonition frequently falls on deaf ears.

However right your instructor may have been about the uselessness of 'percent
complete' as a measure, it is quantifiable and it lends itself nicely to graphs
which superiors can whip out to show upper management that the project is/isn't
on track.

Elna Tymes
Los Trancos Systems


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