More on forecasting

Before going on too much further let's discuss a couple of real world scenarios that apply to any project plan.

You're relatively new on site, new to this particular project, or perhaps new to project management. Nothing wrong with any of those by the way.

You're of the opinion that as a project manager you should be able to tell the client where he's going to be in 3 months time (reasonable). The client is applying pressure for a project plan so he knows what the next 12 months looks like and there is a requirement to commence resource planning as soon as possible. A common enough set of circumstances. 

We can approach project planning in any number of ways, but I'm going to make a useful distinction between two approaches. In doing this I'm going to mis-use a couple of terms - who knows maybe it will catch-on and then it'll be correct use.

We can adopt a 'top-down' planning approach where we define the duration (say 12 months) and then attempt to undertake delivery of the project's scope in this time. Or, we can adopt a 'bottom-up' approach in which we define the PBS and WBS (I discuss these in previous posts), elaborate the work and resources required to deliver the work and let our project planning software tell us when the work will be finished.

For me, the imperatives that serve project sponsors and project management are conflicting, difficult to reconcile and are a re-current source of tension. It should be as simple as enshrining the approach in the PID, mandate or other documentation, but in my experience it isn't.

Let's look a bit more at the various advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches.

In theory at least, I'm all for top-down project planning. Sponsors define the durations (and I might add the scope and budget) and authorise (compel)  the delivery of the project's scope within a that duration. All sounds terribly straight-forward doesn't it? But then, I am of course reminded of the words of Commander C. Theo Vogelsang, USN “… in its relationship to strategy, logistics assumes the character of a dynamic force, without which the strategic conception is simply a paper plan.”. I don't think anyone has ever put it better than Commander Vogelsang.

A positive zoo of wise pragmatism on the subject of logistics from military theatres can be found here.

So, while we like top-down planning, we now recognise that it's not the be all and end all. 

So - let's have a look at bottom-up. We have a scope, that we're going to elaborate into a product breakdown structure, create a work-breakdown structure that will deliver the product breakdown structure and commence delivery. Well, no, you're not. You probably won't have a detailed project scope at the outset of a project, you won't have any funding to commit resources to the work necessary to deliver the WBS and PBS, let alone enter into the commercial contracts potentially required to deliver the actual work. In fact, you won't even get past funding approval.

Some readers may be falling back on a bit of real world experience at this point and envisioning that we commence project start-up with the top-down plan and successively work towards a bottom up plan and in reality that is not uncommon. However, this too has its problems as funding and cost expenditure profiles are often aligned to the top-down plan, and don't necessarily adapt well to that schedule being destabilised by something as annoying as a plan that actually reflects the work that needs to be done and the duration that it will take.

Recognising that I'm beginning to drone on interminably here, I'd better quick bring the end of this post into view.

Consider the following illustration. Hopefully this is broadly self explanatory. The only note I'll add is that (particularly in my field of technical infrastructure, there will always be an unalterable volume of work required to get a job done. Short term variances arise in the identified or forecast volume of work due to imperfections in diligence and discovery at the start and blunders during the work's execution. Below I refer to this unalterable volume of work as 'K'. 

In an ideal world, Kt is about the same as Kb which is about the same as K. in reality you never know K until you've finished your project. However, deciding on how important it is to know Kt or Kb accurately, or the acceptable variance between these and K should be decisions made with full disclosure at the outset of the project start-up. Needless to say - any decision should be data driven and the criteria that might inform this decision might include; cost, criticality, complexity and risk.

I think there's a few more interesting observations to be made for the illustration above - but I'm not going to elaborate that too much. What does it mean for your project's in your organisation?

More yet to come on forecasting.

Sewing up a few lose ends and knitting it all together

Time to wrap up (for now at least) on the WBS and allied products.


I mentioned that sometimes there was a lot of work and not much product. If you need better control around this or simply better control period then I enclose a work package template here.


The first half is pretty much Prince 2 all the way. The second half incorporates specific test management activities intended to root out defects.


Two interesting points about work packages - sometimes resource pools really respond well to them. They can definitely accelerate delivery. Secondly, if you ask for written checkpoint reports from assigned resources you can rely on finding out problems after they've happened. If you take the time to verbally engage with the assigned resources you might be lucky to catch sight of problems before they occur.


Next I include a small but useful resource which is distilled from the WBS (which we have talked about) and the project plan (which we haven't) which nicely sows up all the delivery dates for all the products. 


For ease of administration I recommend including the WBS dictionary, the product descriptions and the product handover log on different work sheets in the same work book. I've never done anything clever with this using SharePoint / Excel Web Services but doubtless they'd be some value in exploring this.


I'm a bit cautious with the illustration below but felt it was worth including even in its slightly flawed state. The PBS is a bit nomadic, and there are one or two abstractions too far. But I think there's more right with it than wrong so I include it here and welcome suggestions for how it can be neatened up a bit.

There's a heck of a lot more worth exploring, both central to the illustration above (testing, estimating, tracking and controlling progress) and peripheral (benefits management, value management, business case writing) to name but a few. But, that's all for another post on another day.

Requirements, part 3

So far, I've had a good whinge about the MoSCoW method of requirements prioritisation, and suggested the alternative method of paired comparison. In this post I'm going to talk a little about the life-cycle of a requirement and why the management of requirements is pivotal to testing and product acceptance. In a future post, I'll come back to the topic of requirements prioritisation to provide a middle ground between MoSCoW and paired comparison.

 First, let's revisit the method of achieving quality I put forward in a previous post.

It's probably time to add a few more specifics around this, and that in turn will provide an entry point into several subsequent posts.

1. Requirements - this is the subject of this post and (at time of writing) two others besides. The scope of this activity extends to the elicitation, prioritisation, specification and management of the requirements
2. The QRA will be the topic of a subsequent post. For those impatient to get to grips with this, read Rex Black's material here. In short it's an analytic approach to prioritising the testing effort with a view to minimising risk
3. Development and implementation - we will get to this at some future point. As project manager you should be planning, directing and controlling this activity.
4. Testing - a big big topic but I'll endeavour to distil some valuable points during the course of future posts. I'm a big fan of V-Model development and sowing test activities throughout all development activities. Crucially; every development activity has a corresponding test activity. I would also keep in mind IEEE 829, a standard approach to test plan management. Links here and here Plenty more to come on this topic.
5. Defects have a management life-cycle all of their own. This is to ensure that efforts to resolve the defects are suitably prioritised, that defects when resolved are confirmed as fixed and a whole host of other activities. I'll post a couple of articles on this in the future.
6. Lastly the quality log. Technically, it is not strictly required however, in isolation the defect log (a component of defect management) paints an overly bleak picture. (Try having a defect log of 600 things which don't work - it doesn't make for happy project boards either). Incidentally, it helps too with product acceptance as opposed to the defect log (recording things which don't work) it provides a central repository encompassing all the things that do work.

So with this all said, let's focus on the role requirements play at each stage above. First, there's the requirements themselves. The QRA cannot be produced without a clearly understood set of requirements and do please note that this tool is sometimes crucial in placating legitimate stakeholder anxieties. Undoubtedly it is possible to start development and implementation activities without a detailed requirements specification. Doubtless too, this is one of the principal causes of project failure. You can certainly build something, but you cannot achieve quality without a clear understanding of what is required. Testing specifically is the activity of identifying defects and defects are defined as requirements that haven't been met. You cannot test a system if you don't know what the requirements for that system are. Defect management - the process of managing defects through the defect life-cycle cannot be undertaken without a detailed understanding of requirements.

So at every stage of this activity, requirements are playing a principal role. I think that'll probably suffice in terms of the 'big picture'. I have endeavoured to provide a solid basis upon which to build in future posts. These will include posts on how I typically approach the prioritisation of requirements, an explanation of the QRA, a complete review of the defects management life-cycle and more besides.

Influence - a pragmatic and effective approach

Robert B. Cialdini's book - Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion is a good read. The consistently underhanded techniques of car salespeople and evangelists for one or other faiths is entertaining, enlightening and extremely useful in terms of knowing the sorts of tactics employed by sales, marketing and a host of other people trying to get you to do something they want.

However, its not that much use for this project manager other than gaming* members of the project team on who's turn it is to make the tea round.

* One of those verbalised words becoming increasingly popular. However, links to game theory and a constant reminder that complexity manifests unintended consequences means the author has a ticket for this bandwagon. 

Typically I have fallen back on the techniques learned in the field of service delivery. Equally I have had the wonderful opportunity to see just how powerful presenting stakeholders with new and better information can be. Don't ever underestimate the potency of this very simple approach. And while we're at it, don't ever confuse simple with easy!

By pure luck (a lot more on this in the future) I was fortunate enough to attend a talk run by the excellent APM on the subject of Influence. This was an hour long distillation of some of the key points contained in the book Influencer: The Power to Change Anything  - a deservedly bold title with too many authors to include here easily.

I'm not going to seek to reproduce precisely what the book encompasses, but I will include the illustration below which I think is certainly a core principal.

I've used here the simple example of encouraging cycle helmet use amongst cycle commuters. The book's authors, backed by a bibliography longer than is typical, contend that people don't do things because they either can't or don't want to and do things because they can and they want to.

Straight away, I think there's an interesting observation to be made right there - people only need one box ticked not to do something, but both boxes ticked to do anything.

Next, the book's authors identify three domains in which these motivations can arise, the personal (you), the interpersonal (peer pressure) and environmental (what's sitting in the immediate vicinity).

Supplemental to this having been proven to be a very effective approach, it is a wholly defensible and legitimate strategy to employ with stakeholders, one that can be documented and one even that the customer will find it difficult to find fault with.

The book elaborates some remarkable success stories using this approach. It makes the point that you only need to 'tick' four out of the possible six boxes in order to stand a very great chance of success.

Again, the dimension of proportionality must be considered, but if you need to reposition stakeholders and this is critical to your project's success, then I contend there are few better approaches.