Schedule tools are always right (fantastic time schedule)-the project manager should be careful with the game 10

 

Banner is a project manager who only knows the waterfall life cycle. They think that iteration is a waste of time. They hope to see Gantt chart in the first week of the project, so that the project manager can manage according to Gantt Chart, everything can be done step by step. As a result, it is inevitable that some senior executives would say, "Well, according to the schedule, your progress should be here. Failed to proceed as planned. What's wrong with you ?"

The decision-making layer does not have a deep understanding of the project. They do not know that people think and act based on experience in the project. They believe that the key path will remain unchanged and the task scheduling sequence will remain the same.

The reason for this is that the reports seen by the Decision-Making layer have been composed of completed jobs, sales figures, or other data, which reflectPastWhat happened. However, the project schedule is for workFutureProgress prediction. This calendar game is also called "fantastic time schedule". For details, see the figure.

 

A beautiful Gantt Chart masks the fact that the schedule is just speculation (see section 5.1.11 ). Gantt charts give people peace of mind to schedule and ignore the inspection of reality.

If the project manager faces such a management layer, you can refer to the following suggestions.

• L develop a wave schedule (see section 5.6). You only need to plan the detailed work of the previous weeks and the major milestones. After the first few weeks, if you still cannot provide detailed schedules, people will feel that you cannot predict the future. You can create a new calendar with completed tasks, the next wave of work, and milestones updated every month. In this way, you can tell other people what they have done and do not have to be bound to an unattainable huge plan.
• Use low-tech schedule technologies, such as yellow-based schedule (see Section 4.3.1) or wall cards. You can also invite the Decision-Making layer to review the project schedule.
• Provide estimates with confidence levels (see Section 5.1.5), rather than Gantt charts.
• Use an iteration with time box restrictions and only one iteration can be planned at a time. Measure the development speed of the team. After three iterations, the Project Manager may know enough data about the speed to predict the remaining schedule of the project.

People believe in the correctness of the Schedule tool because it assumes that the estimated schedule can be very accurate. The problem is that few calendars are accurate. Many products can be accurate, for example, "we will release products at on Wednesday", but they are not accurate. Because the calendar is just an estimation, it looks pretty and cannot change this reality, and the calendar is always slightly different.

In this game, there is nothing wrong with the schedule tool. The key is that people who use it trust it too much. As a project manager, you must select the most effective schedule and explain it to others. If it works, you can also use the schedule tool. But don't stick to it just because it can make beautiful charts.