In complex projects (such as EPC projects), are essential for modeling the Gantt chart, recalculating dates, and tracking progress. However, it is a communication mistake to attempt to use these tools to communicate with business executives, who need to be engaged in project reviews to take preventive or corrective actions. Synthesis is the key: a project schedule with hundreds of lines should be summarized into no more than 20-30 work packages and 5-10 significant milestones. PMPeople integrates with scheduling tools to keep both worlds synchronized.
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 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.
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:
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:
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 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.
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:
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