Corrective Action Log If you work on contracts that require earned value management as standard, you’ll be familiar with the idea of corrective actions. These are items requested, normally by the government agency you are working with, that address areas of your earned value management system that are under-performing. Across the life of a large-scale […]
5 Ways to Transfer Learning Back to the Workplace
Transfer Learning Back It can be hard to transfer knowledge back to the workplace after you’ve been on a course. Asking around the office, we found a couple of colleagues with stories of how they had learned something, found the course brilliant, and then within a month had slipped into old ways of working because […]
Options for Scheduling Progressed Activities in P6
Primavera P6 has three options for handling relationships when scheduling progressed activities. They are particularly important to understand when tasks progress out-of-sequence. Sometimes activities are performed out-of-sequence. This is when a successor activity begins before its predecessor is fully completed. The classic example is a predecessor and successor connected by a finish-to-start (FS) relationship, where […]
What is Schedule Analysis?
Schedule analysis is a way to check that your project schedule is built flexibly and robustly. It’s a set of checks that help build confidence in the dates, dependencies and resource allocations required to deliver the work. During a schedule analysis exercise, we’re looking for two things: How well is the schedule built? This relates […]
3 Common Results from RCA (Root Cause Analysis)
RCA (Root Cause Analysis) is a powerful technique that helps you understand why aspects of your earned value management system are not working as expected. As part of responding to a corrective action request, the project team will carry out an RCA exercise to identify what caused the failure. There are various tools you can […]
Top-Down Planning in Deltek Cobra
Top-Down Planning in Cobra is a useful feature which gives you the ability to adjust a budget or forecast cost class’s value at various levels of the project’s structure. This process allows the user to adjust a cost class to equal a specified value. While there are many scenarios where this utility would be useful, […]
Using The P6 WBS Summary Task to Specify a Lump Sum Cost
Using The P6 WBS Summary Task Your subcontractor agrees to produce a deliverable for a fixed price or lump sum cost. How can you assign this cost to the respective deliverable in your Primavera P6 schedule? Let’s take a look. Typically, a scheduler assigns resources (labor, material, and equipment) to task efforts. The cost of […]
How To Create A One-Page Project Report
One-Page Project Report Executives are busy people. And so are project leaders. You don’t have time to write multi-page reports. While there is a time and a place for the detail, project status updates simply need to get the key messages across quickly. The one-page project report was popularized by The One-Page Project Manager, a […]
Schedule Float Explained
You probably have schedule float on your project already, and you might not even know it. However, more than one project has been saved because float provided the flexibility to take a different path if necessary, without having a negative impact on the project overall. If your project is at risk of running behind, it’s […]
What is Cost Variance?
What does cost variance mean? Cost variance is the difference between earned value and actual cost, at the date you wish to measure. It is used to assess the project’s cost performance. Cost variance for a project is represented as a financial amount. This number tells you the variance from your original budget, whether that […]