The scheduling of activities is the first major requirement of the program office after pro- gram go-ahead. The program office normally assumes full responsibility for activity scheduling if the activity is not too complex. For large programs, functional management input is required before scheduling can be completed. Depending on program size and con- tractual requirements, the program office may have a staff member whose sole responsi- bility is to continuously develop and update activity schedules to track program work. The resulting information is supplied to program office personnel, functional management, team members, and the customer.
Activity scheduling is probably the single most important tool for determining how company resources should be integrated. Activity schedules are invaluable for projecting time-phased resource utilization requirements, providing a basis for visually tracking per- formance and estimating costs. The schedules serve as master plans from which both the customer and management have an up-to-date picture of operations.
Certain guidelines should be followed in the preparation of schedules, regardless of the projected use or complexity:
● All major events and dates must be clearly identified. If a statement of work is sup- plied by the customer, those dates shown on the accompanying schedules must be included. If for any reason the customer’s milestone dates cannot be met, the cus- tomer should be notified immediately.
● The exact sequence of work should be defined through a network in which inter- relationships between events can be identified.
● Schedules should be directly relatable to the work breakdown structure. If the WBS is developed according to a specific sequence of work, then it becomes an easy task to identify work sequences in schedules using the same numbering sys- tem as in the WBS. The minimum requirement should be to show where and when all tasks start and finish.
● All schedules must identify the time constraints and, if possible, should identify those resources required for each event.
Although these four guidelines relate to schedule preparation, they do not define how complex the schedules should be. Before preparing schedules, three questions should be considered:
● How many events or activities should each network have?
● How much of a detailed technical breakdown should be included?
● Who is the intended audience for this schedule?
Most organizations develop multiple schedules: summary schedules for management and planners and detailed schedules for the doers and lower-level control. The detailed schedules may be strictly for interdepartmental activities. Program management must ap- prove all schedules down through the first three levels of the work breakdown structure.
For lower-level schedules (i.e., detailed interdepartmental), program management may or may not request a sign of approval.
One of the most difficult problems to identify in schedules is a hedge position. A hedge position is a situation in which the contractor may not be able to meet a customer’s mile- stone date without incurring a risk, or may not be able to meet activity requirements fol- lowing a milestone date because of contractual requirements. To illustrate a common hedge position, consider Example 11–1 below.
Example 11–1.Condor Corporation is currently working on a project that has three phases: design, development, and qualification of a certain component. Contractual re- quirements with the customer specify that no components will be fabricated for the devel- opment phase until the design review meeting is held following the design phase. Condor
Detailed Schedules and Charts 417
has determined that if it does not begin component fabrication prior to the design review meeting, then the second and third phases will slip. Condor is willing to accept the risk that should specifications be unacceptable during the design review meeting, the costs associ- ated with preauthorization of fabrication will be incurred. How should this be shown on a schedule? (The problems associated with performing unauthorized work are not being considered here.)
The solution is not easy. Condor must show on the master production schedule that component fabrication will begin early, at the contractor’s risk. This should be followed up by a contractual letter in which both the customer and contractor understand the risks and implications.
Detailed schedules are prepared for almost every activity. It is the responsibility of the program office to marry all of the detailed schedules into one master schedule to verify that all activities can be completed as planned. The preparation sequence for schedules (and also for program plans) is shown in Figure 11–10. The program office submits a request for detailed schedules to the functional managers and the functional managers prepare summary schedules, detailed schedules, and, if time permits, interdepartmental schedules.
Each functional manager then reviews his schedules with the program office. The program office, together with the functional program team members, integrates all of the plans and schedules and verifies that all contractual dates can be met.
Before the schedules are submitted to publications, rough drafts of each schedule and plan should be reviewed with the customer. This procedure accomplishes the following:
● Verifies that nothing has fallen through the cracks
● Prevents immediate revisions to a published document and can prevent embar- rassing moments
● Minimizes production costs by reducing the number of early revisions
CONTRACTOR PROGRAM OFFICE
REQUEST FOR DETAILED SCHEDULES
AND PLANS (LEVEL 3)
1 INDIVIDUAL
REVIEWS
4 5 6 VERIFICATION 7 8
9
2 3
PROGRAM TEAM REVIEW
ROUGH DRAFTS
FINALIZE PLANS/
SCHEDULES
FUNCTIONAL MANAGEMENT
DEPARTMENT/SECTION LEVEL
PROGRAM TEAM MEMBERS CUSTOMER
PROGRAM OFFICE SUPERVISE PREPARATION VERIFY THAT ALL
FUNCTIONAL PLANS ARE INTEGRATED
CUSTOMER REVIEW
FUNCTIONAL MANAGEMENT
REVIEW
PREPARE PLANS 10DISTRIBUTION
PUBLICATIONS
FIGURE 11–10. Preparation sequence for schedules and program plans.
● Shows customers early in the program that you welcome their help and input into the planning phase
After the document is published, it should be distributed to all program office person- nel, functional team members, functional management, and the customer. Examples of de- tailed schedules are shown in Chapter 13.
In addition to the detailed schedules, the program office, with input provided by func- tional management, must develop organization charts. The charts show who has responsi- bility for each activity and display the formal (and often the informal) lines of communi- cation. Examples were shown in Section 4.11.
The program office may also establish linear responsibility charts (LRCs). In spite of the best attempts by management, many functions in an organization may overlap between functional units. Also, management might wish to have the responsibility for a certain ac- tivity given to a functional unit that normally would not have that responsibility. This is a common occurrence on short-duration programs where management desires to cut costs and red tape.
Project personnel should keep in mind why the schedule was developed. The primary objective is usually to coordinate activities to complete the project with the:
● Best time
● Least cost
● Least risk
There are also secondary objectives of scheduling:
● Studying alternatives
● Developing an optimal schedule
● Using resources effectively
● Communicating
● Refining the estimating criteria
● Obtaining good project control
● Providing for easy revisions