Engage Executives in Project Scheduling

Every project, if it is to be managed professionally, should begin with a deadline. This applies to any type of project, whether predictive, agile, or hybrid. Executives approve the project’s effort and expense on the condition that business results are achieved within a specified timeframe, no later.

Why is meeting project deadlines so important to the executives of any company?

The main reason is financial:

• In end-user companies, the positive cash flows of a project typically do not occur during the project itself but rather after transitioning the product, service, or final result to operations. From the transition point onward, the business case estimates a series of growing net cash flows over successive periods. After a certain operating timeframe, the project shows a significant return on the project investment. This return is usually expressed numerically using metrics such as Net Present Value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), payback period, or the benefit/cost ratio (BCR). If one project is prioritized over another, it is usually because it has a higher NPV, IRR, or BCR, or a shorter payback period.

• In companies that sell projects to clients –e.g. consulting firms– profitability is not calculated by forecasting the cash flow after the transition but rather after the sale. The project will have forecasted revenues from invoices, from which expenses –purchases, travel costs, fixed-price subcontracts–, reserves –to address anticipated contingencies and other unknown risks–, and costs for using material and human resources –internal and external staff– must be deducted to calculate the project’s benefit. If the estimated margin is below a certain threshold, this is often grounds for rejecting the invitation for bid.

In these profitability calculations, the fundamental premise is that the project finishes below budget and within the estimated timeframe. Any executive knows that, in most cases, finishing a project late also means finishing over budget. For this reason, they continuously request timely and reliable information about potential delays.

“Executives have the incentive to ensure that the project finishes on time.”

The project management team should take advantage of the fact that the primary incentive for executives is to ensure the project finishes on time. During progress reviews, we can explain delays that have already occurred, those we anticipate might happen, propose preventive or corrective actions, and secure their support to implement these measures before it’s too late.

The most effective way to communicate the status of project timelines is through a diagram called the “project schedule.” Executives expect a project professional to explain this type of representation, which includes bars, milestones, dependencies, durations, and dates. Any executive would be able to interpret the following diagram, generated using the scheduling tool Microsoft Project:

• This project was approved with a duration of 215 labour days (43 weeks). It is scheduled to start on April the 3rd and finish on February the 13th of the following year.
• To shorten the project’s duration, the duration of one or more of the 8 critical path activities would need to be reduced (43 weeks = 6+2+4+4+10+10+4+3).
• The start and end dates for each activity have been planned. For instance, “excavation” is scheduled to begin on June the 5th and end on June the 30th (after 4 weeks of work).
• There are 3 milestones (key points in time when significant project objectives will be achieved): site cleared (May 19), excavation done (June 30), and construction started (July 31).

A project professional who explains the schedule in this way during the kickoff meeting sounds like a good professional by communicating these details, supported by this graphical representation. Executives feel confident that the project is in good hands. Experienced project managers, however, know that nothing has been proven yet.

As the famous quote by Dwight D. Eisenhower goes: “Plans are useless, but planning is everything.” Planning the dates of a project does not mean they will not change. We need a schedule to measure deviations and make adjustments with preventive or corrective actions.

Let’s imagine this project status review in mid-July. We need to communicate the bad news that we foresee a final delay of 23 days. That is, if we continue as we are, the project will not last 215 working days, but 235, and will not finish on February 13, but on March 15. The progress schedule allows us to support the explanations, as can be seen in the following diagram:

• The first activity started one week late, on Monday, April 10 instead of Monday, April 3, which caused a 3-day delay due to the Madrid holidays on April 6 and 7. Additionally, it lasted 2 weeks longer than planned. This accounts for the 13-day delay in this activity, in the successor activities, and in the first milestone.  
• We had another issue with the “excavation” activity, which has not yet finished, but is expected to take another 2 weeks longer than planned. This explains the 23-day delay in this activity, in the successor ones, and in the other two milestones.  
• At this progress review date, the “preparation” work package has been completed, and the first milestone has been met.  
• The “subsurface drainage” activity is 43% complete, which means the “field work” work package is 10% complete. On the other hand, since 57% of the excavation has been completed, we can say that the “ground work” work package is 34% complete.  
• In summary, we can say that the project is 18% complete, and if no corrective actions are taken, it will finish 23 days later than planned, on March 15.

When delays are forecasted, a project professional must proactively propose solutions to save time and ensure the project finishes on schedule. Let’s look at a revised version of the schedule, including certain adjustments:

• If we reduce the scope of the activities “pouring supports seat galleries” and “erecting pre-cast galleries”, we could save 2 weeks on both activities.  
• If more resources are assigned to the activities “installing artificial playing turf” and “scoreboard,” 3 days could be saved on these two activities.  

If these corrective actions are convincingly argued, it is highly likely that the project steering committee will authorize this “descoping” and the allocation of resources, and that they will support us in making these decisions effectively, that is: having the client authorize the scope reduction and ensuring that the resources are pre-assigned.  

The project now has two critical paths (making it more likely to be delayed), but the completion date is back to the one initially committed to.

However, we often fail to get support. Why? Due to communication issues. When projects are running, schedule diagrams are no longer as clear as they were at the project kick-off. Managers get lost in the details and stop being engaged.

Notice how the diagram above has become more complicated, and keep in mind that it has been simplified for educational purposes. This timeline is not representative of a real project. In actual practice, these projects, called EPC (Engineering, Procurement, and Construction) typically have lots of activities –from hundreds to thousands. Organizations usually assign a full-time schedule professional just to keep the schedule updated.

If I use such detailed schedules to report about dates, before the status review meeting I will have to print a multi-page report, send it in advance, and trust that the executives have time to read it. During the project status review meeting, I will try to display this diagram but nobody will be able to follow along. Therefore, they won’t understand the proposed actions and won’t support me in pre-assigning the resources I need. The project will end up late, over budget, and I will be blamed for it.?

In complex projects, project scheduling tools are very effective for modeling activities, recalculating dates, measuring progress, etc. Imagine having to do this work with Excel! However, these highly detailed schedules are not helpful for communicating with business executives. We overwhelm them with too much information, and we lose them. The classic management mistake due to poor communication.

At PMPeople, we focus on project governance. We don’t want to store all project documents; instead, we integrate with file management tools like One Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. Project Professionals can use PMPeople alone to plan and control the project schedule, they don’t need any other tool for that. However, in the particular case of projects with hundreds or thousands of activities, the recommendation is to integrate with a scheduling tool. Most scheduling tools, such as Microsoft Project, Oracle Primavera, Smartsheet, etc., can export the schedule baseline and tracking schedule as XML format. Our integration consists of being able to import this XML file automatically.

The important consideration to keep in mind here is that, generally, executives don’t need all the detailed schedule information. A schedule of hundreds of lines should be able to be summarized in no more than 20-30 work packages and 5-10 significant milestones for effective project governance.

“Engage Executives in Significant Work Packages and Milestones.”

In the scheduling tool, before exporting the model to XML format, user can mark with the number “1” in the “Priority” field only those packages and milestones that need to be uploaded to PMPeople:

After uploading the file, the following schedule of work packages and milestones is now understandable for anyone from a web browser:

Just like accessing from the mobile app:

The schedule status as of July 14th is now understandable:

Finally, the project status reports show information updated by the Project Manager in real time, accessible at any time from the browser or the mobile app, not only during the status review meeting:

The updated information should also be accessible in the mobile app:

Watch video summary at ▶️ YouTube: