Category: Project management

Measuring your project’s performance  doesn’t just mean meeting project budget and timelines.  In fact, other types of performance are also expected to be monitored and measured. This is intended to measure the ROI nd to determine if goals are being met.

Generally speaking, at different times during the project life cycle, it is best to measure five deliverables: schedule, quality, cost, stakeholder  satisfaction, and project scope.

This information can be used to grant – or deny – approval to proceed with the subsequent section of work.

But, before you move on to measuring your project’s performance, you need to set your goals.

Setting and measuring project objectives

A project’s success can be measured in many ways, including if it meets deadlines, if it is within budget, if it has led to more sales, improved customer service or efficiency, or a combination of these or other factors.

The first step, therefore, is to establish what the objectives of the project will be, and what will be regarded as a success.

Once these goals have been established, metrics can be determined to monitor the status of activities.

Why is it important to define and measure the success or performance of a project? For the simple reason that “what gets measured, can be managed.”

The 5 performances to measure in a project

Here are the five benefits to be measured:

1. Project schedule

Successful project management is often determined by whether or not the original timeline has been met or not.

Experienced project managers know how difficult it is to fully meet a project schedule, but this definitely becomes easier if you constantly measure progress as you progress through the work.

Evaluating the schedule is something you can do more formally at the end of a phase or as part of a monthly report to project stakeholders.

It’s easy to update your project schedule if you use a Gantt chart, where tasks and deadlines are converted in graphic time sequences.

To measure your project performance, you can easily compare milestones, check to see if they still meet the originally agreed-upon dates, and, if applicable, calculate the slippage and the impact the delay will have on the overall project schedule.

2. Quality

Quality plays an important role among performance measurement. The end of a project phase is a great moment for a quality check.

Here you can check both the quality of your project management practices and the final results.

A quality check can gauge whether what you are doing meets the standards set by the quality requirements.

It’s better to find out quality issues early, as trying to solve them later in the project could become really costly.

3. Budget and costs

Cost Management  is the torment and delight of many project managers who regard cost management as one of their top priorities on a project.

Here, you compare the actual current expense with what you had budgeted and, if there are any variations, look for the reason why.

These values must then be forecast into the future to eventually re-predict the final total budget for the project and compare it to the original estimate.

If these forecasts escalate too much, it is an indication that spending and cost management are out of control and action to fix the problem is required.

4. Stakeholder satisfaction

Project stakeholders are key to accomplishing a large portion of work, so it’s worth talking to them regularly to find out how they feel about the project at that particular time and what could be done differently.

This is a difficult element to document statistically or numerically, although there is nothing to stop you from asking them for an objective rating, for example using a series of 1-10 scores.

If stakeholders do not fully support some decisions regarding the project, you can implement plans to engage these people to the fullest and try to find common ground.

5. Project scope

The last factor is to determine whether the benefits of the project are still feasible and whether the business problem to be solved that led to the launch of this project still stands.

This is because certain types of initiatives are launched to address a particular need, but by the end of the project the business environment has changed to the extent that the project becomes redundant.

Nobody made the effort to monitor the business case during the project lifecycle, so no one realized that the work was no longer needed.

Regularly checking your business case and reassessing it given your current business objectives then becomes a parameter to be checked regularly.

Other elements can, of course, be added to this list depending on the type of your project, organization, and industry.

Indeed, performance to be measured during the project should be reflective of what is important to the project manager, the team, the stakeholders, and the company as a whole.

Also, at the end of a project, a thorough and final evaluation will be performed.

Project management metrics are essential for implementing practical and sustainable project management practices and processes in any organization.

The key is to try to use metrics that are simple, convenient, and relevant to the business and industry in which you operate.

Using Twproject, these measurements become very straightforward. Measure them for free with Twproject by clicking on the banner below.

The precedence diagramming method of project activities is a visual representation technique that shows the interdependencies of activities and is used in the development of project planning.

With so many challenging responsibilities involved in managing a project, project management has become even more demanding, so using assistive tools is becoming increasingly valuable.

The precedence diagramming method is a great communication tool for stakeholders.

Let’s have a look at it in more detail in this article.

What is the Precedence Diagramming Method (PDM)?

The Precedence Diagramming Method, is a visual strategy for project planning network diagram development that makes use of rectangles, also called nodes, to symbolize activities. Because of this, it is also called Activity on Node (AON).

This method visually represents any pre-existing, recognized planning activity through the use of interconnected nodes.

The major benefit of using the precedence diagram method is that it quickly allows the project team to understand all scheduled and affiliated activities.

Using the precedence diagramming method, you can:

• Visually display the project progression as a precedence diagram
• Determine if you are on schedule
• Quickly identify dependencies among activities and the effect of any modifications
• Pinpoint critical processes and activities and report them as a critical course.

A precedence diagram can represent a whole project, but you can also create a partial diagram that shows only a portion of a project.

Indeed, not all stakeholders, are interested in having the overall, detailed presentation.

How to build a precedence diagramming method (PDM)

To build a PDM method of precedence diagramming, the preliminary stage of planning is to focus on the work breakdown structure.

The overall project becomes more convenient and manageable when breaking the tasks down into smaller assignments.

Below are some steps for creating a precedence diagram:

• Make sure you have a blank page or a blackboard to draw the plan on
• Insert the final result of the work breakdown structure on the right side of the page
• Report each activity from the breakdown structure and arrange them in the order in which they are to happen.
• Work from the left until you have dependencies between tasks and get a function sequence going from left to right.
• Make sure there is no standalone activity with no connection.

As the project advances, there may be more tasks that need to be done; these can be included in the diagram and work breakdown structure.

Relationship types in precedence diagramming method

With the precedence diagramming method, four types of relationships are used in activities. These are:

• Finish-Start (FS): is the most common relationship type used between activities. An activity cannot begin until the previous one is completed. For example, to paint a wall you must first build it, so the first activity is building the wall, and the second one is painting it.
• Start-Finish (SF): is the lesser used relationship in a precedence diagramming method. In this case, the B activity may end only after the A activity begins. For example, your old house will be demolished to build a new one. In this case, you cannot move into your new house until it is ready. Therefore, the second activity (building the new house) must be completed before the first activity (moving into a new house) begins.
• Start-Start (SS): is a type of relationship that shows that the next activity cannot be started until the first one begins. Both activities should therefore begin at the same time. For example, you need to apply a coating to a wall, but the wall needs to be cleaned first. Therefore, one team will clean the wall, while the other team will coat it. Both activities can begin at the same time.
• Finish-Finish (FF): In this case, the following activity cannot be completed until the first one is concluded. For example, in an IT project, during testing, bugs will be found related to the software being developed. These bugs will be fixed by the developers, and then the testing team will have to double-check that the bug is actually fixed. Therefore, testing and bug fixing activities are an example of this type of relationship.

Dependency types in precedence diagramming method

Four types of dependencies are used to define activity sequences:

• Mandatory Dependency: This dependency is also known as “hard logic” and you cannot avoid it because the beginning of the next activity depends on this type of connection. For instance, you can’t build a ceiling until you have built all the walls of a house.
• Discretionary Dependency: this dependency is also known as “soft logic” and is involved in resource optimization. For instance, you can build all four walls of a house in any sequence. However, if building them in a certain order is beneficial, then they will be built in that exact order. Discretionary dependencies are supervised by the project team and can be modified to shorten the project. In this technique, the tasks remain the same, but the order changes.
• External Dependency: These come, of course, externally to the project and the team has no control over them. For example, you may need government approval before you begin your next project activity.
• Internal Dependency: these are under the project or organization’s control. For example, a resource cannot be obtained until it is released from another project.

Benefits of the precedence diagramming method

The use of the precedence diagramming method brings a number of benefits to project management, including:

• It helps in finding relationships and dependencies between activities. This , in turn, helps in planning and avoiding risks.
• It helps to find critical activities and focus on them. Any delay in critical activities will set back the entire program.
• It is a fine communication tool, as project stakeholders can see the activities and get an understanding of the program.
• Without a precedence diagram, project planning cannot be developed.

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The amount of effort involved in creating a precedence diagram is relatively high, mainly because prior knowledge of work packages and the critical path is required, but with a project management software is so much easier.

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The predictive power of the precedence diagram depends on the quality of the estimates of effort and task duration, and all this can be learned in time thanks to a software that can keep all your project history for future analysis.

Create your precedence diagram, assign your team to correct phases with correct estimation, keep track of everything is happening and helps your team with prioritized to do lists. Track your project history and learn for your experience!

Decision making and its impact in problem solving is simply undeniable and is an intrinsic part of effective project management.

It is key for a project manager to make sound decisions and fix problems appropriately as it affects the overall organizational functioning.

Problem solving and decision making are typically intertwined; you cannot solve a problem without making a decision.

The importance of decision making in problem solving

Also in project management, problems are an everyday event, or nearly so.

It would be awesome to just pretend nothing happened and make them magically disappear, but if you don’t seek solutions, the problems will persevere.

In the workplace, if the problem-solving habit is not established in the company culture, the organization will eventually fall apart.

Therefore, the project manager must have the training and the proper decision-making process to solve business problems independently and confidently.

This way, the decision-making process will be an asset to the organization.

The 6 stages of the decision-making process

Even though some people are more in tune with proper decision making, this skill can still be learned and mastered by any person.

Below are the 6 steps of the problem-solving decision-making process.

The Decision Making Process: Defining and Identifying the Problem Clearly

This might be the most overlooked piece of the decision-making process because it sounds so obvious, yet it is critical that all stakeholders are properly aligned on the issue at hand.

You might be shocked to discover how much information can be lost, especially in a larger corporate organization.

If problems are complex, it can be beneficial to break them down into smaller pieces as early as project planning.

It’s important to stay clear of emotion and judgmental bias as you define the problem to make it as objective as possible.

Here is a list of questions that can help you define and identify a problem:

• What is happening precisely?
• Where is this happening?
• How is this happening?
• How often is this happening?
• With whom is this happening?
• Why is this happening?

The Decision Making Process: Collecting Information

Most problems cannot be solved without a fair share of data or information.

During this decision-making stage, what is important is to collect relevant information.

Usually, having too much data hinders the process and results in a waste of time. Likewise, there may be instances when data collection generates a new perspective or problem.

In this scenario, it may be worth going back to Step 1 and revisiting the problem at hand.

The Decision Making Process: Brainstorming possible solutions

This is the time to be creative.

During this phase, the project manager, with the help of the project team and/or stakeholders, should consider any type of idea that could become a solution.

Brainstorming works best in an atmosphere free of bias because you never know which idea will plant the seed and stimulate the growth of the correct decision.

Brainstorming involves coming up with as many ideas as possible, the more complex the issue the more ideas are needed, even those that may initially seem wild.

The Decision Making Process: Narrowing down options

From the lengthy list of potential ideas, now it’s time to narrow it down.

The ways in which you get to choose the main ideas may vary, but may include:

• Pros and cons list: identify the benefits and drawbacks of each option
• SWOT analysis: breakdown of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of each option
• Scenario analysis: projection of potential likely scenarios that will result from each option

Different problems will require different levels of understanding of each potential option.

This assessment process helps narrow down the options and aid in choosing the most effective and feasible solution.

It is a good idea to include key stakeholders in this process to get an unbiased and balanced view.

Here are some questions that can be helpful at this stage:

• What will the situation be like when the problem will be fixed?
• What steps should be taken to implement the best solution to the problem?
• What resources will be needed in terms of people, budget, and facilities?
• How long will it take to implement the solution?
• Who will be the main responsible for ensuring the plan gets executed?

The Decision Making Process: Implementing the solution adopted

This is the action phase, where the chosen solution gets actually executed on the problem.

This requires a decent plan and good execution, and constant monitoring of the steps is necessary.

However, in this step, two things must be kept in mind:

• First, choose the option that has the company’s interest at heart. There will be times when some employees will be negatively impacted by a decision, but in most cases the best solution for the organization as a whole is always taken.
• Secondly, keep in mind that not all stakeholders may be happy with the solution implemented. Only in rare cases will all of the single members of an entire company be fully satisfied with a major decision, and that is the case in most cases. Often, however, employees who are initially dissatisfied will eventually see that the decision was made for the overall good of the company and will adapt accordingly.

The Decision Making Process: Assessing results

Assessing the results leads to understanding the effectiveness of the adopted solution.

To understand if the plan was successful, it is necessary to get an idea of what helped and what didn’t and try to incorporate the changes.

In case the solution did not prove to be effective, you move on to choose a new option from the alternatives.

Therefore, decision making is critical to problem solving, even in project management.

It may seem like a lot of work, but by taking the necessary steps to solve important problems and come to a successful resolution will save much more time and lead to a healthier business in the long run.

Top-down and bottom-up stand for different approaches to different problems in project management.

Project management approaches and strategies get constantly evaluated, reviewed and improved, and successful project manager make it a priority to stay informed about the latest developments in their field.

In recent years, the world of project management has seen a growing debate between these two fundamentally different approaches.

In this article, we will attempt to shed light on these two strategies.

Top-down project management

The top-down approach is the most traditional of these two.

A top-down strategy involves all key decisions being made by the project manager or organization’s leaders.

When a project is managed from the top-down, the work breakdown structure and project plan are completed and drafted from the top, meaning the top management, after which team members are told what tasks they should complete and when they should be accomplished.

What is most important to an organization is profitability. Projects are not usually directly accountable for generating profits for the company, but rather they make the products that companies sell.

Time to market is very important for an organization; therefore, the company wants products and services to be developed as quickly as possible.

Top-down management is a very common method and is suitable for projects where there are few unfamiliar activities and a handful of unique challenges to be addressed.

Pros and cons of the top-down approach

Here are the pros and cons of the top-down management approach:

Pros:

• The advantage of the top-down planning is that the goals at all hierarchical levels are mostly the same as the goals of the company as a whole, since top management itself manages the work of all departments.
• Complex and time-consuming coordination tasks are cut out so that the plan can be created more quickly.
• Yet, if the project leader knows how things are going at other levels and sets clear expectations and goals that aren’t blurred by several different voices, the project team doesn’t get distracted from participating in project decision-making. This provides them with more time to focus on their tasks. It’s still important, however, that the decision-maker considers exactly how the decisions will impact both project and employees, otherwise the results could be negative.

Cons:

• The main downside of the top-down planning approach lies in the fact that management is very rarely familiar with individual departmental opportunities and problems. This causes bottlenecks and reduced productivity as well as the pursuit of unrealistic and therefore unachievable goals.
• Moreover, many organizations have begun to experience that the top-down approach can leave team members demoralized and unmotivated, as they typically have very little control over what they need to do and how they should do it.
• Then again, following this approach, ambiguity opens the door to potential failure. As a matter of fact, managers should be as specific as possible when communicating their expectations
• Lastly, the idea of a single person – or a limited group of leaders – leading the project and making decisions for everyone, especially if they are often inefficient, can bring up a dictatorial climate, affecting team morale. On top of that, if the leader is not perceived as such, it will be harder for employees to take responsibility.

Bottom-up project management

Bottom-up project management is steadily gaining popularity, in particular in industries where projects involve new challenges that demand innovative solutions.

In the bottom-up model, project goals are still established by organizational leadership, yet the team members who will carry out the work are asked to provide input on how the project goals will be achieved.

Project to-do lists and deadlines are usually not completed until the project team has assessed what to do, which often results in more realistic schedules and fewer (nasty) surprises along the way.

To-do lists are integrated into the overall plan to help prevent undesirable surprises, and there is complete transparency in terms of deadlines, budgets, deliverables, risks, and potential problems.

Pros and cons of the bottom-up approach

Also the bottom-up management approach has its own pros and cons. Let’s see what they are:

Pros:

• Organizations often find that employees are more personally involved in plans that employ a bottom-up approach. Plans are developed at the lowest levels and are then handed off to each next higher level, reaching senior management for approval.
• Another plus is that with bottom-up planning, more focus is given to the project because there are more employees that are involved, each with their own area of expertise and where everyone has the chance to devise project solutions that focus more on practical requirements than abstract notions. Plans are thus more realistic.

Cons:

• A potential drawback to this strategy is that the initial stages of the project can take much longer and require more effort to coordinate, as project managers must incorporate input from a large number of stakeholders into the project plan. Too many ideas, in fact, can stall business agility or even result in bottlenecks or problems.
• And again, despite all its pros, the bottom-up style alone will not be able to make projects thrive. In fact, according to many experts, the bottom-up approach is not the ideal solution, as it sometimes fails to provide clarity and control.
• Ultimately, some people have an ego. When everyone has a voice, the motivation of some employees may be purely personal, boosting their self-esteem rather than being focused on the greater good and the real goal. This can lead to conflict and division within the project team, and a negative competitive environment.

Il New York Times: an actual example

One of the most popular examples when it comes to the top-down and bottom-up approach is the New York Times, a leading journalism company.

This company implemented a top-down management style and according to the American Journalism Review, New York Times executives felt that what they were doing was not capable of creating a vibrant workplace and a successful business.

Power was centralized and editors at the top of management had overall control.

As a result, employees at lower levels felt that their voices didn’t count and weren’t being heard.

Journalists were not morally motivated to perform their jobs and there was no effective collaboration among them.

Managers then realized that they needed to give teams more freedom.

It took quite some time to introduce elements of the bottom-up management approach, but in the end it was worth it, as collaboration has now improved and teams are working more productively.

Deciding between top-down and bottom-up approaches: the hybrid method

The top-down management approach, as seen above, is the classic management method that is applied in most organizations.

Over the years, however, its flaws have begun to become clear, especially for organizations that seek a vibrant, collaborative, flexible and agile work environment.

That’s why many organizations have started to implement the bottom-up approach, yet even this management method is not the perfect solution, as it sometimes lacks clarity and control.

Therefore, the best direction, according to many experts, lies in balancing these two opposing approaches and just taking the best practices from both: opting for a hybrid method.

Indeed, in few cases is a formal, static decision on either approach an optimal choice for the organization.

Historically, it is the top-down approach that has ruled in most companies, however, an increasing number of organizations are looking for ways to incorporate some elements of the bottom-up philosophy into their current project management practices.

Even organizations in industries where projects are typically repeatable and predictable can improve the morale of their employees by allowing team members to participate in the project planning process.

Moreover, organizations in fast-moving industries, such as technology, have even stronger incentives to move to bottom-up project management in order to get the most benefit from their employees’ experience, creativity, and innovative knowledge.

It’s no surprise, then, that a holistic approach that combines both methods is undeniably the most wise strategy.

The most effective way to set a successful roadmap might actually be a hybrid approach, starting with a brief assessment of the actual organization relative to resource management best practices.

A mix of both planning methods allows for efficient, business-goal-driven implementation and the inclusion of all relevant departments.

This can greatly increase the quality of planning outcomes.

Using technology as a tool to combine both approaches

Traditional project management tools were designed with the top-down approach in mind.

Specifically, traditional applications were not designed for bottom-up management and were focused on the project manager, making them the main link in project communication.

Team members very often didn’t have access to the project plan and cannot give contributions.

Therefore, it was the project manager who must collect all the data and manually enter the information into the project plan, and then communicate the changes to business leaders.

Fortunately, the old ways of sharing and receiving information have been radically transformed in recent years.

New technologies change the old way of managing projects and bring new models of collaboration, based on collective intelligence.

This collective knowledge and intelligence is now successfully collected and shared in a flexible, collaborative environment brought to you by new, second-generation project management software.

This allows a project management software like Twproject to combine the benefits of both management approaches. Twproject lets you manage projects with bottom-up strategy, top-down but also both of them together.

Project management democratization should not be regarded negatively.

The main goal is to find ways to make project management and collaboration more efficient, and new technologies applied to project management make everything more effective and teams more productive.

In the end, projects do get delivered faster and that’s to everyone’s benefit.

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Theory of Constraints in Project Management is an approach that helps you to pinpoint the crucial limiting factor, usually referred to as a constraint or bottleneck, that gets in the way of achieving a goal.

The main goal of this theory is to find and address that constraint to the extent that it is no longer a limiting factor.

The Theory of Constraints is often associated with the saying “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link” because the process of finding a weak link in a chain is very similar to finding a bottleneck in a system.

Theory of Constraints Goal

The theory of constraints hypothesizes that any complex system consists of multiple related activities, where one of them, the weak link in the chain, could potentially disrupt the entire system.

According to the theory of constraints, the best way for an organization to achieve its goals is to reduce operating expenses, reduce inventory, and increase throughput.

Operating expenses are all the money the system spends to convert inventory, or stock, into throughput.

Inventory represents all the money the system has invested in buying goods it intends to sell.

Throughput is the rate at which the system generates money through sales.

Before the goal itself can be achieved, all of the preconditions must first be met.

The five implementation steps

Theory of Constraints provides a specific methodology for identifying and eliminating bottlenecks within your system.

Here are its five implementation steps:

• Identify the constraint: every system has at least one constraint that limits its growth, otherwise it would expand endlessly. First and foremost it is necessary to identify the constraint which can be physical, such as a material or managerial weakness, such as an inefficient procedure.
• Decide how to leverage the constraint: After having identified the bottleneck, you need to plan your processes so as to leverage the constraint, if physical, to its fullest. In fact, production lost in the bottleneck is production lost by the system in general. When the constraint lies in the managerial level, it should not be leveraged at all, but rather eliminated and replaced by a more efficient process that increases throughput.
• Subordinate activities according to the decision taken: each activity that is part of the production cycle where the system constraint is present is reorganized accordingly to match the constraint’s maximum throughput. Since, as we have seen before, the constraint determines the throughput of the organization, subordinating tasks is the most efficient way to use the available resources. It is important to note that the previous steps involve, in most cases, a limited number of people, but at this stage all people operating in the system must be involved.
• Elevate the constraint: Elevating means increasing the throughput of the constraint. If you get to this point, it means that the previous changes were not sufficient to improve the system to the point where the constraint was eliminated. Actions to increase the capacity of the constraint may be different, such as buying new equipment or hiring more manpower. When this step is completed it will mean that the constraint has been eliminated.
• Repeat the steps for each constraint you found for continuous system improvement: This step recommends not to sit back once results have been achieved. One constraint has been eliminated, but it does not mean that there are no other bottlenecks. This is because every change you make to the system can create new constraints that were not previously present. It is therefore essential not to let passiveness itself become the system constraint.

Theory of Constraints in Project Management – Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM)

As mentioned earlier, the theory of constraints is a method that can be used to improve management techniques.

This means that in the project management context, the theory of constraints can be used to plan more efficiently the various activities that are part of the production cycle.

Hence, Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM), or the critical chain method, originates.

This method was devised as a response to the poor performance of many projects, such as longer than expected work periods, frequently missed deadlines, cost overruns, and lower quality than originally promised.

The first step of the CCPM method is to determine the critical link in the project, i.e., the longest delivery path considering estimated activities and material availability.

This method differs from others by offering a different estimate of task duration and redistributing task safety time, which will not be eliminated, but instead reinserted into other parts of the process. This is known as buffer management.

The underlying philosophy is that uncertainty in activity duration is the primary driver of a project’s delay and any other unsatisfactory outcomes.

The key would then be to shift the focus from the duration of individual activities to the duration of the entire project.

Safety time allowances of tasks, which often turn out to be unnecessary, are reallocated to strategic points in the project.

Each task is associated with a buffer, the consumption of which gives an indication of project progress.

In CCPM, monitoring is done by comparing the percentage of buffer remaining and the percentage of chain completed.

As long as certain proportions between these two variables are met, the project can be said to be on track. If, on the other hand, the critical limit is exceeded, it will be necessary to take measures.

Buffers are divided into three equal parts with different colors: green, yellow and red. If the level of consumption of the buffer is in the green zone, no action is required and it can be said that the work is going well.

If the level enters in the yellow zone you must start to think about possible corrective actions.

When the consumption level enters the red zone, the critical limit has been exceeded and action is required to solve the problem.

Theory of Constraints Benefits

One of the most valuable features of the theory of constraints is that it emphasizes the improvement process.

A successful implementation of this approach comes with a number of advantages:

• Enhances the system
• Allows to produce more
• Increases profit
• Reduces delivery times
• Creates a smoother and faster product flow
• Reduces inventory and work in progress

Therefore, managing a project using the theory of constraints provides increased system productivity.

It also ensures that the project is delivered on time and within its planned budget.

A bottleneck is basically a situation where work is delayed.

It can be a one-off event due to unforeseen circumstances, such as a team member who gets sick, or it can be events that happen on a regular basis due to poor planning or a lack of resources.

The most common methods of getting things back on track include working overtime, hiring additional support and pushing back the delivery date.

The problem is that all of these solutions end up eating up, and sometimes draining, the project budget, employee energy, and client patience.

Rather than looking for a quick fix, it’s important to address bottlenecks in projects before they arise.

This means a strong measure of forward planning, excellent communication with the team and beyond, and the right tools for the task.

What is a bottleneck and what is the cause?

Bottlenecks in projects occur when the team or an employee cannot process their work in a timely manner, thus causing a delay.

This could be due to a team member having to take an unplanned break, a technical issue arises, a communication breakdown occurs, or the manager has overestimated how much their team could do at maximum capacity.

Although it’s difficult to predict employee illness and faulty or out-of-service equipment, there are things you can do to help your team keep moving forward regardless.

How to find a bottleneck

When using a spreadsheet as a planning tool, you should identify bottlenecks where the number of hours of work to be done in a day exceeds the number of work hours in the day, either for an individual or for the team as a whole.

If you use a project management software, ou can leverage Gantt charts s a graphic way to organize schedules and quickly identify problems.

If you are working following the Lean method, you can keep track of work through Kanban charts and thus finding very quickly where there is an overrun – this is a possible sign of a potential bottleneck.

However, it is worth remembering that not all short delays are an indication of a bottleneck.

In this case, you can measure for how long work remains in the queue and note the number of items waiting.

If tasks start piling up faster than they are being processed, you are almost certainly experiencing a bottleneck.

How to stop a bottleneck before it happens

The most obvious and easiest way to deal with a bottleneck is to invest money and resources, but this is not always necessary.

Here are two of the most popular techniques for stopping a bottleneck before it’s too late:

Stopping a bottleneck: Processing the critical path

The Critical Path Method (CPM), helps identifying the most important activities and then coming up with the quickest way to complete a project. To process a project’s critical path, you need to identify the longest section of dependent activities. This gives a sort of “bare minimum” time frame that you can use to plan the project.

Stopping a bottleneck: Distributing resources – leveling

Resource leveling is, simply put, the act of working on a project with people assigned to a set of tasks and doing it in such a way that they don’t have to work overtime.

Basically, it’s a process of shuffling tasks so that team members can work on tasks consecutively instead of simultaneously, thus helping to avoid bottlenecks.

How to limit a bottleneck when it happens

Not every bottleneck necessarily escalates into a disaster. Here are some possible solutions to limit the effects of a bottleneck once it happens:

How to limit a bottleneck: Act promptly

Bottlenecks have a domino effect on the rest of the workflow, also introducing an element of chaos. When schedules change, deadlines can be ignored and emotions can overrule rationality, leading to bad decisions.

The key to mitigating blowback is to act quickly. If a bottleneck has already started, you need to address it immediately and not give it any more space.

How to limit a bottleneck: Do not compromise quality

In the case of a bottleneck, a project manager might be tempted to skip certain steps not considered so necessary, such as quality control. However, this is a bad idea.

Each project step is necessary, and skipping them may save time, but could lead to bigger problems later on.

How to limit a bottleneck: Keeping WIP (Work in progress) limits

The purpose here is to limit the amount of work that can be delayed in Work in Progress (WIP) stage. This is also less daunting and stressful for project team members.

How to limit a bottleneck: Increase resources

If you have people willing to help, why not take advantage of them? This will help get the job done quickly and efficiently. One way to do this would be to keep a list of trusted freelancers or external contractors who will work on call and can serve as backup.

It’s also a good idea to have a small budget set aside in case of an emergency.

How to limit a bottleneck: Prepare for all eventualities

The best way to address a bottleneck is to plan for one before it occurs. In this case, investing in good project management software allows for activity tracking tools and charts that help the project manager detect any potential bottlenecks ahead of time.

With a software like Twproject, for example, you could identify overloaded resources and take actions before a bottleneck became a real problem for your project.

Bottlenecks are one of the main reasons why projects get delayed, budgets are not met due to additional costs, and the whole process becomes unpredictable.

Preventing is always better than treating, even in the case of bottlenecks it is always better to have a plan to avoid encountering these obstacles, but even if they do occur, with the proper strategy it is always possible to avoid problems that will undermine a project’s success.

Corrective and preventive actions are processes used to identify, record, and address defects, deficiencies, and nonconformities.

These are also called “CAPA” (“Corrective Actions Preventive Actions”) and constitute an organization’s immune system.

Typically, corrective action, preventive action, and defect repair are terms commonly used in project quality management.

Defect correction is a simple concept, yet distinguishing corrective action and preventive action can be difficult; in fact, the difference is so minimal that many people get confused.

What is the CAPA?

CAPA, as stated previously, is the abbreviation for Corrective Actions Preventive Actions.

These two aspects of CAPA are usually connected, but here’s the main difference between the two:

• Corrective action: elimination of the cause(s) of an existing non-conformity or undesirable situation in order to prevent its future recurrence.
• Preventive action: identification and elimination of the causes of potential nonconformities in order to prevent their occurrence.

In standards-based quality certifications such as ISO 9000 for example, the preventive action description directly follows the corrective action description, which has led to the misconception that the two processes should work together.

Actually, they are two separate paths and preventive action ideally precedes corrective action to prevent or avoid the need for corrective action.

Thus, corrective action is reactive, while preventive action is proactive.

What does corrective action mean?

Corrective action means identifying, documenting and eliminating the root cause of a nonconformity or problem to prevent the problem from repeating.

Corrective actions are looked at in more detail than corrections – which solve immediate problems – and corrective actions are typically implemented over a slightly longer period of time to prevent recurrence.

For example, if you put a bucket under a leaky pipe, this is a correction because it solves a problem immediately. However, if you inspect the entire sink and drain and notice that the pipe is dripping and clogging repeatedly due to a damaged gasket which is then replaced, this is a corrective action.

Corrective Process Steps

Here are some steps you can find in a corrective process:

• Identifying and documenting the problem promptly. Ask questions to obtain details and determine if this is a one-time event or if it has the potential to recur.
• Implementing a temporary fix, mitigation, or repair.
• Determining the cause of the problem.
• Determining the solution that will prevent the problem from recurring. Solutions may include new parts or process changes.
• Implementing corrective action and making sure everything is reported.
• Verifying that the action continues to be effective and that the problem does not recur.

What is preventive action?

Preventive action is now considered a part of good planning and proper risk analysis and management.

This fully embraces the idea that prevention comes first and eradicates problems and, therefore, the necessity for corrective action.

Preventive action determines what in a project might deviate from the chosen path and cause, for example, over budget or low quality output.

A good example, referring back to the previous one, would be to check the pipes and drains of all the sinks present to see if certain parts should be replaced before they fail.

A preventive action process, besides including a specific preventive action plan to mitigate potential problems, also includes implementing controls to ensure that any preventive measures continue to work.

Preventive action means identifying not only potential problems, but also improvement potential opportunities.

Popular – yet wrong – ideas about CAPA

Although regulations may require organizations to properly record CAPA processes and adhere to them, organizations often have the following misconceptions about this concept:

• It is a punishment because something went wrong
• It’s extra work. The solution is to set up a review board with people trained in appropriate roles so that CAPA becomes a regular responsibility.
• Training is too expensive. Management often complains that neither budgets nor programs offer resources for training employees in the efficient implementation of CAPA, yet you can save money by setting up a process.

CAPA is easier with a little help

Companies will always find flaws in their products or processes, but there will always be room for improvement, and that is the reason why, using a software management software is crucial.

Corrective action is an activity that has been determined to correct or resolve a present problem, while preventive action is defined as an activity identified to prevent a problem that may occur in the near or distant future, both, with a software like Twproject can be determined easily.

Twproject will show late projects in real time and issues incurred for corrective actions and, at the same time, can create a knowledge base for preventive actions for future projects.

Although the purpose is different for both, preventive and corrective actions are created to address issues in the past, present, or future.

The ability to identify risks and help identify corrective and preventive actions is an important skill that organizations can – and should – develop and use to their advantage at the expense of the common, but misconceptions surrounding CAPA.

Organizational transformation within a company is typically undertaken because it is believed that the transition will enable a firm to work at a higher level. The aim is to become more efficient, productive, in short, to transform the company into innovative and more profitable.

It’s also meant to keep up with new technological and economic developments; in some ways, organizations are forced to embrace change.

If change is poorly dealt with, however, it can become a double-edged sword, leading to a loss of productivity and poor employee performance. In this regard, you may find it worthwhile to read another article in which we discussed how to deal with resistance to change in your company.

Managers, including project managers, need to understand their role in change management.

Hence, here are some tips you can use to manage the change management process in your company more effectively.

What is organizational change?

Organizational change is the process in which a company modifies strategic or operational key components.

This may involve changes to the company’s culture, essential technologies, organizational structure, or key initiatives and objectives.

Organizational change is typically categorized into two types: adaptive change or transformational change.

• Adaptive changes are small, incremental changes that an organization makes to evolve over time and can be thought of as the tweaking of business processes and strategies.
• Transformational changes are larger in scope and scale and typically bring a major change in direction for the organization. These changes are often the result of external forces putting pressure on the company, such as the arrival of a new competitor.

Why does a company change?

Organizational change is the motion of an organization from one state of affairs to another.

A change in the environment often requires a change within the organization operating within that environment.

This change might be planned years in advance, be incremental and slow or, in cases of extreme urgency, be abrupt and drastic.

In any case, regardless of the type, change involves abandoning old ways and processes of working and adapting to new methodologies, strategies and visions.

Let’s see what can be the reasons for a company change:

1. Organization demographics: The average workforce age is steadily increasing. The baby boom generation approaching retirement age and insufficient numbers of young workers are not helping to close the gap. Organizations may realize that as the workforce ages, the benefits preferred by workers may change. Work arrangements such as flexible work schedules and job sharing may become more popular as employees remain in the workforce after retirement. Thus, organizations need to formulate new strategies to address these different needs.
2. Technology: Sometimes change is driven by quick technological developments that, over time, will become increasingly commonplace.
3. Globalization: Globalization is another threat – an opportunity for organizations, depending on their capability of adapting to it. Due to differences in national economies and living standards across countries, organizations in developed countries are discovering that it is often cheaper to produce goods and provide services in less developed countries. Yet economies in countries are not static either, and given these changes, understanding how to manage a global workforce is a must. Managing employee stress from moving abroad, retraining the workforce, and learning how to compete with a global workforce are changes that companies must deal with.
4. Market conditions changes: Market changes can also create internal shifts as companies must adapt. A very clear example of this is the Coronavirus pandemic that has literally upset the majority of industries.
5. Growth: It is obvious for small startups to grow if they are successful, and as an organization grows, organizational change is required accordingly.
6. Poor performance: Change can happen even if the company is underperforming and there is a threat perceived from the environment. In fact, poorly performing companies often find it easier to change compared to successful businesses. How come? High performance can lead to overconfidence and inaction. As a result, successful companies often continue to do what made them successful in the first place.

Tips for change management in a company

Here are five tips and strategies you can use to better manage change within a company.

1. Understanding change process

All change processes have a series of starting conditions – Point A – and an end point – Point B.

The change process is all that happens between these two points and includes several steps that are generally grouped into three phases: preparation, implementation, and follow-through.

Here’s what happens during each phase:

Preparation: the change manager focuses on preparing both the organization and its employees; this means helping employees understand the need for the upcoming transition and mapping out the vision and plan to achieve it.

Implementation: the change manager focuses on implementing changes in a way that is compatible with the company’s vision for the future.

Follow-through: the change manager focuses on ensuring that change is integrated into the company’s culture and operations.

2. Understanding forces of change

To effectively deal with change, managers must first understand why this is necessary.

Without doing so, it can be challenging to create a plan that tackles core concerns and fundamental questions such as:

• Which pressures are driving change?
• Are these internal pressures, like a new leadership?
• Are these external pressures, such as the development of new technology or the arrival of a new competitor?

If people understand the factors that necessitated an organizational change, they will be more likely to embrace it.

3. Create a plan

After understanding the reason for the change, you need to create a plan.

This plan should broadly outline why the change is needed, define its scope, determine key stakeholders, build a team and provide a detailed roadmap of the steps needed to complete the transition.

By having a defined strategy in place, it makes it easier to communicate the change to employees and monitor progress.

4. Communicate

When leading an organization during a time of significant change, clear and purposeful communication is one of the most powerful assets.

In short, leaders must be able to communicate change to two very different audiences: the first consisting of employees and the second consisting of management.

In the former case, these people must understand the need for change and the impact it will have on their job responsibilities.

In the second case, these people must be convinced that the change is necessary and, once they agree, they must be regularly updated on the status of the project.

5. Prepare for roadblocks

Regardless of how much you prepare for a change, often not everything will work out according to plan.

Even at the planning stage, it is critical to try to foresee potential roadblocks.

Once these obstacles are identified, even the most complex problems can be addressed and fixed.

As Heraclitus said twenty centuries ago, “Everything flows.”

In other words, change is a human constant and, consequently, it is also a constant in the business sector.

Adapting to and managing change therefore becomes a fundamental skill for dealing not only with the future, but also with the present.

Lead time and cycle time are widely used terms in the Kanban world.

However, quite often, people get confused when trying to understand the difference between them and their significance.

For the sake of dispelling doubts once and for all regarding the identification and differentiation between Cycle Times and Lead Times, we have decided to shed some light on the matter with this article.

What is Cycle Time?

Cycle time is basically simply the amount of time it takes for a task to get from a “In Progress” state to a “Completed” one.

The clock starts ticking on the cycle time as soon as the task goes from a “Ready” state to a “In Progress” state and stops ticking when the work element goes from a “In Progress” state to a “Completed” one.

What exactly these states mean will vary depending on the work and context.

If the work element moves back and forth, for example because the client changes their mind or doesn’t accept the work and insists that it be modified or done again (you might be interested in this article on how to manage change requests on a project), the clock won’t reset, but it will continue to tick.

Cycle time is a very important measure that portrays the efficiency of a system in processing units of work.

However, it has nothing to do with what happens outside of that system, such as the queue to put work into that system. That’s where lead time or delivery time comes into play.

What is Lead Time?

The business environment is dynamic and produces new customer requests continuously, and these requests reach the organization as work requests.

Lead Time is the length of time between the occurrence of a new task in the workflow (“queued” status) and its final release from the system (“completed” status).

Lead Time is therefore inevitably always longer than Cycle Time.

Lead Time and Cycle Time Example

If these two concepts still sound confusing, here’s an example to straighten things out.

Let’s imagine a coffee shop with a barista, a cashier and some customers. As soon as the customer orders a coffee from the cashier, that work goes into the queue. That is, the customer has placed an order for a coffee and expects to receive it as soon as possible. The Lead Time clock has therefore started ticking. If there are no other orders in the system, the barista can start brewing coffee right away. As soon as the barista starts working on that coffee, the Cycle Time clock starts ticking.

Cycle time is simply the time needed by the barista to prepare a coffee. The only way to improve it is for the barista to become faster at brewing coffee.

If the barista can start brewing a coffee the very second an order is placed, the delivery time is equal to the cycle time.

But if orders start coming in faster than a barista can make coffees, orders will pile up.

If the barista can make a coffee in one minute, but a coffee order comes in every 20 seconds, the cycle time remains at one minute, but the delivery time will begin to increase continuously as orders pile up.

Professor John Little (MIT professor) came to the conclusion after various researches that the more work you have in progress, the greater the cycle time of the system.

The equation has come to be known as Little’s Law:

Cycle time = work in progress / productivity

How can you reduce the gap between lead time and cycle time?

Sometimes, a task can spend considerable time in a waiting status before a team member is able to start working on it.

This leads to a larger gap between lead time and cycle time, and as a result, tasks reach the completion stage more slowly.

To find the source of this problem, you can use two analysis tools:

• Cycle time scatterplot
• Heatmap

The Scatterplot provides extensive information about the cycle time of all tasks over a predetermined period of time.

In this way, you can identify the tasks that took the longest amount of time to complete.

The heatmap shows data for the total amount of time activities spend in different stages of the workflow.

It can help you understand where tasks spend the most time as the workflow progresses.

Both tools will help you pinpoint which parts of a work process are troublesome and take action to fix them.

You need to remember that work is in fact a continuous process and is constantly changing.

Therefore, you need to monitor the workflow regularly and use the appropriate analytical tools.

Configuration Management is a technical management discipline that is used to track changes in complex systems development, and was originally introduced during the 1950s by the U.S. Department of Defense.

This system received several highly technical names over the years, until consolidated guidance was published in 2001 that established the technical management system now known as configuration management.

Project configuration management is the process of tracking and controlling changes to important project documents and products. This includes project deliverables and project management documents, such as the project schedule document.

Everything that requires tracking through the project change control system is specifically identified in a project’s configuration management plan.

These documents are not generally open to change by anyone at any time.

Instead, all changes are documented and approved, only when strictly necessary, within a project’s configuration management plan.

Configuration management provides documentation that explains why changes to the project occurred, who approved those changes, and who is the assigned change owner.

What is the goal of project configuration management?

The goal of configuration management in a project is therefore to manage the project’s fundamental restrictions of scope, time, cost, and quality.

Within a project, the purpose of configuration management is to identify, monitor, and protect project deliverables from unauthorized changes.

Configuration management is a practice that provides accurate control over project resources by enabling the project manager to:

• Specify product versions in use and existing, and store information about their status, who owns them, and the relationships among them
• Maintain an up-to-date record containing this information
• Monitor product changes Ensuring that modifications are implemented only with prior approval of the designated authorities
• Check records to ensure they contain the authorized products

Within a project, the role of configuration management is to provide:

• Mechanisms for management, traceability and control of all project products; keep the files of every product of a project once they have been checked for their quality, controlling their access and keeping records of their status
• Store each product safely and securely in the most appropriate way, this will include managing access to the product in such a way as to prevent damage to it and to safeguard it from inappropriate access
• A system for recording, tracking and archiving every issue related to the project

How to run project configuration management

Now let’s look at the 5 steps to properly run a project’s configuration management.

How to run configuration management: Be ready from the get-go

The most important guideline is to begin configuration early in the project lifecycle. The project manager should assess the potential for smoothness in the early stages and create the appropriate scaled configuration management system during project planning rather than halfway through execution.

How to run configuration management: Establish a clear baseline

It is very important to establish a clear baseline plan, i.e., the project description as defined at the beginning of the project, as well as to document the different versions during development and the final phase when the project will be released.

How to run configuration management: Consider a design and product configuration

You have to consider configuration management for two areas:

• project management changes
• content or product changes.

How to run configuration management: Record the owner of the documents

Another best practice is to document who owns the different parts of the project. When these owners change and the next individual brings a new perspective into the project, normally there is a temporary increase in the rate of change. Stakeholder support for changes to project and the configuration management process are therefore crucial to system success. With CM processes, change acceptance decisions should be taken at the appointed and recognized change control committee level.

How to run configuration management: Record plan change

Documenting plan changes can be done with simple tools in the case of the simplest projects or with specific project management software. In order for this to work effectively, the plan document must be created with particular consideration.

Where this is the CM method, the rule of thumb is that nothing in the plan should be changed unless it is recorded in the change documentation, thus tracking all project management and any changes.

Each modification is assigned a unique ID, the date of the modification, a reference to the section number, and a description are recorded. Finally, the change to the project or product is described in all necessary details.

Bottom line, we can say that changes are and will continue to be an inevitable part of any project’s design and implementation.

Even the best series of design plans does not guarantee that a particular project will not undergo numerous changes.

This is particularly true when the scope involves a large-scale, multi-contract, multi-phase complex project.

The primary causes of project changes involve changes in design standards, changes in project scope, unforeseen complexities, or difficulties and delays in project implementation.

Project managers, to help control the impact these changes can have on cost, schedule, and performance, are beginning to see the value in using configuration management principles.