Planning Performance Domain
It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that PMI produced a new version of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide). The release of that new book, which is packaged along with the new Standard for Project Management has revisited and refreshed the way many project professionals approach their work.
The new version, which we are informally calling PMBOK 7 in the office, is a breath of fresh air. As we’re currently doing a lot of scheduling-related work, such as managing schedules for clients, schedule conversions and teaching project scheduling tools, it felt natural that the Planning Performance Domain was the first we turned to.
So what’s new? What do project professionals need to know about how PMI is pitching the process of project planning and scheduling now? We’ve digested what you need to know.
Broad skills instead of specific techniques
Past iterations of the PMI guidance for managing projects felt very structured, and process-led as if there was only one way to schedule your project. Of course, that has never been the case. There is no single process or set of tools that works for every project. An oil and gas project with a large construction element would take a very different approach to a digital project developing a new smart phone app.
This new version of the PMBOK® Guide makes it abundantly clear that tailoring is the future. Whether you go all out for a fully-executed work breakdown structure and detailed Gantt chart, or take an agile view, the most important factor is that scheduling is tailored to the project delivery approach that best fits the work.
Adequate time
We love the fact that the new book specifically highlights that there should be adequate time for planning. Clients that try to rush through the planning process end up with a schedule that is unreliable at best, and detrimental to the company’s bottom line at worst. Hopefully this explicit acknowledgement that planning is work and that scheduling takes the time it takes will help more project teams deliver successful results.
Put the time in at the beginning, work to secure engagement and input from the relevant stakeholders, and support your project’s chances of success by using robust project scheduling methods to build out a timeline you can trust.
Scheduling process
The predictive and iterative approaches for creating schedules are outlined in the book, but very much with the expectation that the project manager will lead on the process and will find specific guidance on how to schedule elsewhere.
The predictive approach outlined is what you would expect: decompose the project scope, sequence the activities, estimate, allocate resources and adjust the inputs until an appropriate schedule is agreed.
Agile approaches get less of a detailed breakdown as the process for scheduling will differ depending on what ‘flavor’ of agile you are using. You may rely on iterations and release planning, with a way of linking the product vision and releases to the iteration plans and the detailed scheduling for the delivery of features.
The schedule management plan is where you would establish and document the way the schedule was going to be developed, monitored and controlled – this stays the same as in the last iteration of the guidance.
Estimating
While candidates for the Project Management Professional (PMP)® exam are no doubt still expected to know a range of formulae, there isn’t a great deal of space given over in version 7 to estimating.
The Guide outlines key terminology and the aspects that influence estimating like ranges, accuracy, precision and confidence. It sets out different options for estimating like deterministic and probabilistic, absolute and relative, while leaving it up to the project team to decide which technique is best going to suit their work.
This fits the trend of the Guide to offer up a toolbox of techniques for project leaders to pick and choose from. You are responsible for choosing the methods that would best support your project, documenting those and making sure everyone on the team is in agreement.
Metrics
Given the focus on tailoring and being able to make smart choices about what is right for your project, there is nothing in the book that mandates any particular measures for project performance. Version 7 does talk about lagging indicators and identifying correlations between data points, as well as common scheduling measures like:
- Start and end dates
- Effort and duration
- Schedule variance (SV)
- Schedule Performance Index (SPI)
- Feature completion rates.
Some of these measures will be familiar to those of you working in environments where project performance lives and dies by the Earned Value reports. Earned Value Analysis is mentioned in passing in several places, but for the detail of calculations, the Guide refers readers to The Standard for Earned Value Management. There’s not a lot of EV detail in this iteration of the PMBOK® Guide but we wouldn’t expect there to be. After all, this version comes in at a portable 370 pages so it feels a lot lighter than the 978 pages of the last edition!
As you’d expect, project schedules get mentioned throughout PMBOK® Guide – 7th edition, as the schedule is a fundamental resource that is used and updated throughout the life of the project. It influences risk (the new Uncertainty domain), budgets, reporting, resource planning and more.
In summary
In conclusion, we welcome the changes. The latest PMBOK® Guide feels fresh and modern, and in keeping with the evolving and challenging work environment. It presents knowledge-based solutions that support flexible working and overarching principles that are relevant whether you are leading a small in-house project or are acting as prime contractor for a complex engineering program.
We hope this overview of the Planning Performance Domain helps. You can download a digital copy from the PMI website if you are a member, or buy a print copy from wherever you normally get your books. Happy reading!