PEARL (Diverse Project Management) PMBP_PEA
Project Evaluation And Reporting Logic
Projects are full of surprises – one of the reasons to plan ahead in order to avert disaster. Greater detail is not the answer – we must focus on communicating the expectations and progress made to satisfy these expectations. Project planning tools are plentiful, but they may not satisfy our need for information about work in progress: it can be difficult to see what exactly is being delivered from a given bundle of work effort. PEARL represents the alternatives that are easier to work with, to cut to the chase and focus on what matters. We share more information in a single repository than with most other tools. We use readily available Excel™ software that most stakeholders are familiar with. PEARL is a full training course on project management that takes students through a conceptual process that helps them to develop superior project management habits. No prerequisites.
The most salient aspect of PEARL is the methodology for implementing complex projects in a way that provides the most insight and control within a single system. What are merely good habits in most projects become critical success factors in complex projects: PEARL coordinates many contributing work efforts (or sub-projects) as a practical alternative to complex program- and project management systems. The approach embodied in PEARL is transferable to general commercial software if the Excel™-based solution is not an accepted alternative, although with its embedded database support Excel™ definitely has a massive capacity for large projects.
PEARL imposes a top-down structure on the project organization – this is unlike PRISM that can adapt to different approaches. The intent is to develop good habits by forcing a paradigm on the project management process until it becomes second nature to use these habits in any project management system. As projects become more complicated and detail may be lacking for later product releases budgets can be understated and management may make decisions on incomplete information. With PEARL we can blend detailed work and conceptual work budgets to give a much better approximation of the decision value underlying the project.
PEARL is based on a product breakdown approach in which we understand the overarching objectives while we detail the component work effort. To explain the concepts we use a simple “grapevine” analogy to represent the evolution of project planning from seed to harvest. With simple concepts like “payload” we emphasize how the vine must branch out before the grapes can emerge and ripen: a good project plan follows a similar growth pattern. It also illustrates that the grapes (representing work activities) don’t have to mature at the same rate – some of the work activity can be planned and confirmed before other work activity is settled. There is nothing wrong by showing the empty vines where grapes will emerge at a later date.
As grapes are harvested (the work completes) the vines go dormant. If too many grapes grow on the vines we must prune the excess to protect the vine. These are simple analogies to show how the project plan must be structured and managed to give stakeholders what they are looking for. We compare the grapevine analogy to a building construction project to show the application of concepts in a complex project environment – the concepts are applicable to most projects that evolve as more information becomes available to the planner.
The first step is to understand the planning process using the analogy of a grapevine. It may come as a surprise that much of the initial focus is to get a sense of the funding requirements by performing a thorough top-down analysis of the work breakdown. Dates can be scheduled with PEARL logic, or you can use PEARL to consolidate external schedules that potential contractors or vendors provide. The “Achilles Heel” of complex projects tends to be an insufficient assessment of eventual costs, which is why we emphasize the cost aspect of the planning process: it is not a good thing to run out of money before you run out of work to do. There are many reasons why projects run over budget – the objective is to have control over this escalation by implementing strict change controls that include stakeholder approvals for additional funding requirements.
The challenge with complex projects is to coordinate all contributors to the project (individuals and work teams). A schedule is not meant to be a straight-jacket as it ensures that contributions seamlessly merge to form the desired end-product. That limits what automation can do, as a large project requires a lot of interaction between contributors that have their own scheduling challenges. It can be difficult to get accurate input on current status of work: to combat that you need to schedule stages of maturity with interim deliverables due on agreed delivery dates that are either achieved or missed. We tend to create the original schedule with automation (to set a benchmark) but then incorporate feedback on what vendors, contractors, and internal staff are capable of delivering by each date in order to achieve a viable schedule.
PEARL has the ability to let you define self-contained bundles of work that can be referenced and incorporated in the detailed plan for a given milestone. Each bundle can be associated with a contributor (or team), which makes it easier to follow-up on and control their work efforts. If a schedule uses repetitive elements (condo construction) you can replicate parts of the schedule and only change the reference to create a unique subset (for example, the floor and unit number). Within the overarching plan the reference acts as a saddle task and within each reference the underlying detailed tasks are scheduled separately so that even with duplicate task identifiers there is no confusion about the task precedence structure. This establishes an umbrella of a large project that contains a number of smaller projects that can be adapted to serve different needs.
PEARL allows you to define optional scope and to control scheduling by flexibly including/excluding scope to fit budget constraints. There is a caveat here, that contractors or vendors will want compensation if due to scope changes their contributions are terminated. There are ways to minimize that exposure by incorporating cancellation privileges in work agreements (that are typically time-sensitive). An important part of this coordination is the ability to filter on individual contributors to give them a personalized plan so they know what they are expected to deliver, even if internally in their organization they use another planning approach.
PEARL supports a flexible release management structure, so that the plan may represent a series of deliverable products and upgrades that can be staged and deployed in a controlled manner. Deployment is a big issue in large development organizations with 24/7 operations that have no taste for downtime. A release schedule is typically arranged within a short time-frame and detailed to hourly goals (or even more granular) to make sure the work is done on time. It can also be used for other work of a time-critical nature, such as blocking a street to hoist a generator.
While there are many unique features to PEARL the core of the tool is a conventional scheduling and tracking process that delivers standard reports, budgets, and financials as well as flexible scheduling, with up to 25 years of scope. Because of the complex project context we provide a “watch list” capability to follow-up on external dependencies that cannot easily be reflected in a conventional precedence structure. It is useful to monitor risk events that may trigger mitigating work or, when the event does not trigger, to provide the opportunity to remove the work-around.
Scope changes are a significant concern for complex projects because there is often a point in execution where the stakeholder expectations and delivered functionality grow apart. Sign-off is a poor excuse for not taking new requirements into account – as is the expectation for getting new functionality at no extra cost. The longer it takes to complete work the higher the risk of changes to the agreed upon scope, so it is essential to incorporate flexibility to ensure the relevancy of the deliverables. We need to be proactive and not let things deteriorate into a crock-infested swamp that is impossible to drain.
Learning Formats PMAP_PEA
This course is currently available in a classroom setting (public or company private) with approximately 30 contact hours (5 days).
PDF – Certificate Of Completion
Each course offers a certificate of completion that identifies the course, the student, and a brief description of the course. To receive a certificate the student must have attended at least 80% of the course sessions. This personalized certificate is forwarded to the student by Email.
PDF – Course Notebook
Each course includes a notebook in PDF format that provides the minimum knowledge the student must master in order to obtain the certificate. In the notebook you will find references to other study materials. Students receive the notebook by Email when their registration is confirmed.
PDF – Program Overview
An overview of this study program can be downloaded from the website by right-clicking on the program link on the enquiry page.
PDF – Current Training Schedule
A list of upcoming training sessions can be downloaded from the website by right-clicking on the schedule link on the enquiry page.
Registration – Service Providers
To register for any training course please look on the enquiry link page of your service provider (from where you accessed this website). On the page you will find a registration request form where you can order the course that you are interested in. The availability dates will be provided to you, along with payment instructions if you decide to go ahead.
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