The "Perfect" Integrated Master Schedule is of course a myth. But building a credible IMS is straight forward.

1. BUILDING THE PERFECT
SCHEDULE
You can’t tell the players without the score card

2. §Commitment?
§Capability?
§Capacity?
§Intent?
§Ability?
Is an impossible quest?
Do we have the …
2

3. 3
The perfect schedule
¨ Shows what Done looks
like.
¨ Shows the work needed
to get to Done.
¨ Defines the needed
resources to reach Done
¨ Identifies risks to Done
and their handling.
¨ Measures physical progress toward Done in units meaningful
to the decision makers.

4. 4/57
Before We Schedule, We Need A Plan
The Plan describes where we are going, the various paths we can take to
reach our destination, and the assessment points along the way to assure
we are on the right path.
These assessment points measures the “maturity” of the product or service
against the planned maturity. This is the measure of progress – not the
passage of time or consumption of money.
A Plan Is The Strategy For The Successful
Completion Of The Project – Reaching DONE

5. Our Plan Has To Contain
¨ Who is going to do the work?
¨ What are the outcomes from this work?
¨ When does the work need to get performed?
¨ Where is the work being performed?
¨ Why are we doing all this?
¨ How is the work going to actually be performed?
Six Honest Serving Men, from The Elephant’s Child

6. Let’s start with the Critical Few
They are … Who, What, and When

7. Who are the resources needed to deliver the outcome

8. 8
What is stated in the Plan
Independent of the Domain
Planning a manned spaceflight
vehicle, through incremental
increases in the product’s
maturity.
A Kanban wall chart,
planning the deliverables in
an incremental and iterative
manner.
Traditional
Agile

9. 9/57
Dave,
I’m afraid I can’t
let you do that
When
Controls the
Order of Work

10. 10/57
Using the Critical Few, let’s get started

11. Good plans deal with change, our Perfect
schedule must show how to manage change

12. The Plan Tells Use Where We
Are Going
§ What is being delivered.
§ What work is needed to produce the
deliverable.
§ The order of the work.
§ The resources needed to do the work.
§ The budget for that work.
The Schedule puts these items into a logic network

13. § Numbers are the fuel of all project
performance management.
§ Numbers must be about measuring the
Increasing the Probability of Success.
§ Numbers are always better than
opinions.
The Schedule starts by calculating numbers.

14. ü Measures Of Effectiveness
ü Measures Of Performance
ü Cost (Budget & Actual)
ü Schedule (Planned & Actual)
ü Technical Performance
ü Risk And Its Retirement
ü Stability of Requirements
ü Capacity for Work
ü Staff Productivity
ü Expected Business Value
What are these numbers?

15. The REAL Problem For Every Schedule Is …
The Activities Are Arranged In A Probabilistic Network With
Interdependent Connections Between Work Elements

16. Let’s Build Something

17. ? What capabilities do we
need to posses for success?
? What are the
requirements for each of
these capabilities?
? What are the technical
and operational elements
of each of these
requirements?
? What work must be
performed to produce
these technical and
operational elements?
First we need answers to some critical
questions …

18. We can start to answer these with
the Work Breakdown Structure

19. What is a WBS and what does the
WBS tell us that is useful?
¨ The WBS tells us
what the structure
of the product or
service is, but not
the order of
construction.
¨ So we’ve got ½
the equation.
¨ Guidance for building the WBS.

20. We need to start with “good” WBS,
Sorry, This is not one, …
¨ We want our schedule to
show deliverable
outcomes.
¤ Things that the customer
can take away from the
project.
¤ Things that are things.
¨ Design and Concepts
are not shipped
outcomes.

21. The WBS shows the things that sail
away, fly away, or drive away
¨ We want see the deliverables.
¨ These deliverables are the “packages of work” for
building the schedule that produces the deliverables

22. Events / Milestones define the
availability of a capability
at this point in the
Schedule.
Accomplishments define the
entry conditions for each
Event or Milestone.
Criteria are the
exit conditions for
Work Packages
Work
Package
Work
Package
Work
Package
Work
Package
Work
Package
Work
Package
Work
Package
Work
package
The Topology of our Perfect schedule

23. The flow of deliverables, describes the
increasing value of the project
Pilot
Data
Enrollment
Integrators
Quality Monitor
Internal
Router
Data Store Lookup
Data Warehouse
Data Marts
Data Marts
Portals and others
Billing
Demo conversion process, member reconciliation
Shared group matrix reports and interfaces
Shared member crosswalk and members to ERP
Integrators in ERP converted to inventory
Status and trigger conversions
Data in Marts
for ERP
Material Master
Converted from
legacy
External Interfaces
External Vendors
converted to ERP
Finance Loss TBD
Resale's Vendors from
legacy
Emulations Material
converted end–
to–end

24. Quick Review
¨ Build a credible Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
for the deliverables of the project – not the
functional activities that produce the deliverables.
¨ Define the Packages of Work that will produce
each of the Products or Services.
¨ Define the Outcomes of each “Package of Work” in
units of measure needed to assess maturity,
compliance, or fulfillment of the requirements.
¨ Start arranging these packages of work (the Work
Packages) in the logical order.

25. We’re one step closer to building a
schedule, we know the deliverables
Business Need
Process Invoices for Top
Tier Suppliers
1st Level
Electronic Invoice
Submittal
1st Level
Routing to Payables
Department
2nd Level
Payables Account
Verification
2nd Level
Payment Scheduling
2nd Level
Material receipt
verification
2nd Level
“On hand” balance
Updates
Deliverables defined in WP

26. Now We Need to Measure of
Increasing Maturity of the Contents of
the Tasks and Work Packages that
make up the Schedule

27. We must discover the numbers
that measure the performance
of our Perfect schedule
§ How are we going to measure
performance of our work efforts?
§ How are we going to calculate the
needed budget and schedule
duration?
§ How are we going to determine the
risk of not meeting our cost and
schedule goals?
Our Perfect Schedule must
contain this information, so we
see how we are progressing
toward DONE.

28. § Late or over budget.
§ Compliant with the technical
performance measures.
§ Providing the needed
capabilities.
§ Performing at a level that will
get us to a soft landing at the
end of the project.
The Perfect Schedule provides
information about the future so
we can take actions needed to
stay GREEN
Without these number we
can’t tell if we are …

29. The Schedule
must Answer
the question…
How long are
we willing to
wait before we
find out we are
late?
We’ll be
waiting a
long time

30. The Perfect Schedule provides a forecast of future performance
§ Credible Earned Value Baseline
§ Risk retirement plans
§ Visibility to the Capacity for work
§ Measures of Effectiveness
§ Measures of PerformanceNewsweek, February 24, 1958