That husky dog was a good one

haaa haaa haaaaa haaaaaaa

Gud berak after all those heated crap in other threads

This reminds me of chicken and pig story: (Copied from one of the websites, few months before)

There are several variants as to how the Chicken and the Pig meet and the level of the relationship between the two.

However, in every variant, the Chicken suggests that the two involve themselves in a scheme involving ham (or bacon) and eggs (some suggest a breakfast, others suggest a restaurant). In reply, the Pig always notes that, for the Chicken, only a contribution is required (as a chicken can simply lay an egg and then resume normal activities), while for the Pig a "total commitment" (or total sacrifice) is needed (as in order to make ham or bacon, the pig must be slaughtered).

This illustrate two types of project members: pigs, who are totally committed to the project and accountable for its outcome, and chickens, who consult on the project and are informed of its progress. By extension, a rooster can be defined as a person who struts around offering uninformed, unhelpful opinions.

A successful project needs both chickens and pigs (roosters are seen as unproductive). However, given the sacrifice required of being a pig -- forswearing other projects and opportunities - they can be difficult to collect. Thus, the construction of a successful project-team must ensure that the project has sufficient "pigs" - and ensure that they are empowered to drive the project in return for committing to and taking accountability for it.

So, guys who r u then, PIG or a CHICKEN (Chooza)?

:-)

The project that I am currently using as an excuse to continue my therapy, has a very unique method of schedule compression.

basically all project management theory, practices, knowledge (they didn’t have this one to start with), has been tossed out the window.

We run our entire project at the whim of the engineering and construction manager.

They simply say when something has to be delivered and assume it will be.

I’ve got no reason to doubt this as they have made me strip 85% of the detail from my schedule and I’m not required/allowed to have resources in the schedule.

In fact, if I change the data date and the pretty green bars move out to the right from the pretty yellow bars, I have to stay after work and sit with the managers in question and move the pretty green bars back over the top of the pretty yellow bars, well the end dates anyway..

To say that I’ve done nothing to rectify the situation is not quite right, I live in hope that all of the noise I make is being heard and that there will be a day in the near future where they actually give me a design deliverables list that I can throw in a schedule and if I’m real lucky I’ll be able to put some resources against them.

I’ve nearly finished my degree in basket weaving while I wait for this info, and I’ve knitted 3 jumpers - well a bloke has to do something with his time at work........

Seriously though, the project is so far off the rails they just don’t want to know. They did not engage in any upfront planning at my request as they maintained that "This Project Is Being Run As An Alliance". How foolish of me then, we don’t need a plan,,,,,, It’s an Alliance - and we all know that they are the best thing since sliced bread - Don’t we.........

I love my Job...I love my Job...I love my Job...I love my Job...I love my Job...I love my Job...I love my Job...I love my Job...I love my Job...I love my Job...I love my Job...I love my Job...I love my Job...

Andy

everybody, please be informed that you can always compress your schedule using whatever technique you knew (after all, it’s only on paper or your pc) but you can never compress the real work (considering real sequencing) unless there are changes in quantities or volume of the work. so I suggest for studying Work compression techniques rather than schedule compression.

Gentlemen
We have seemed to have forgotten that in order to compress a schedule one needs to determine the amount of Total Float or the amount of Resources allocated to an activity.
To say that reducing a 30 day activity to zero duration did n’t do much was because that activity had only one days float.

If it is possible, the way I do it is to examine the resource loadings and ascertain whether or not I can temporarily increase the resource loadings in order to reduce the duration, and gradually work my way through the network logic. In addition I also use a technique called progressive feed which does a great job of reducing various paths.

If you do not know how to do progressive feed (or Ladders as it is called in Micro Planner X-Pert), then read HS Woodgates book on Planning by Network which was published back in 1964.

Schedule Compression - Been there and done it

Raf

Hi Alex

I am always ready to learn something new - even in planning.

So if you know how to accelerate a programme other than by either changing the logic or reducing the duration of the activities or both then my eyes and brain are open to receive.

As I have said before the art is to do both and retain the integrity of the programme.

There have been a number of times when my employer has asked me to "knock off" a couple of months so that he can "get the job".

I do the best I can to get as near as possible to his target - telling him the risk and cost implications - but if it can’t be achieved at all then he can look for another planner before I put my name to an invalid programme.

That is one advantage of working as a freelance consultant.

Best regards

Mike Testro

"I have never yet read any books on planning techniques and I do not mean to start now."

Then, Mike, there is certainly no grounds for us to debate.

Cheers.

Hi, Vinod; hi, Mike.

Mike, at base, you are of course correct when you say that the only two ways to compress the schedule are to change logic and/or durations. But that’s a bit like saying that the only way to make a baby is to have a sperm make contact with an egg -- undoubtedly true, yet there’s an awful lot of what you may term "art" in accomplishing that goal! Some techniques may be more or less successful in different contexts. (Genghis Khan was evidently very successful -- but most of us would probably not experience long-term success by using his approach!)

Schedule compression is hugely valuable. The more assistance we can give the scheduler by pointing to places where crashing or fast tracking might be more productive, the better. Obviously, the simplest such pointer is the critical path, as all the duration and logic changes in the world will have no impact if applied to work that has float.

Unfortunately, PM (and PM software) is not very helpful in pointing to activities that are fertile for compression. A 30-day activity on the CP may be reduced to zero and the project duration may change by only one day. Conversely, another CP activity may have a duration of just 8 days -- but by halving that duration to 4d, we may be able to gain the full amount of the activity reduction on the project duration. The concept at work here is DRAG, the amount of time a CP activity is adding to the project’s duration. And while it’s easy to see and compute in a small project network, it gets bloody hard in 5,000-activity schedules with lots of complex dependencies! (This in fact is one way I make my living!)

A second useful pointer is DRED, or the Doubled Resource Estimated Duration. This is a measure of an activity’s "resource elasticity". Even if a CP activity has lots of DRAG, it’s not always possible to shorten its duration economically. Some activity durations are a LOT less impacted by added resources than others, and that’s useful information to have when trying to compress a schedule -- how much would added resources shorten an activity’s duration, or would they leave it unchanged or even make it longer (the latter being a situation I recently experienced dealing with work to be performed in the cockpit of a jet; not much room in there!)?

The third acronym is the CLUB, which is the Cost of Leveling with Unresolved Bottlenecks. It is not a metric for helping compress an individual project schedule, but rather for helping an organization identify those resources that repeatedly wind up with DRAG on the resource-loaded CP. By measuring how much the delays due to the lack of such resources is costing, the individual project can often justify the cost for more such resources. And the whole organization can start targeting the specific staffing shortages delay are delaying its projects.

The best resource for all this is probably my book Total Project Control (John Wiley, 1999), but there are some web-based articles. Unfortunately, the best article "Scheduling is a DRAG!" by Bill Duncan (author of the 1996 edition of the PMBOK Guide) is temporarily not available -- it was published by ChiefProjectOfficer.com whose site is now defunct. Projects@Work.com has taken over their articles, but not yet put them on-line.

However, there are six articles by me in the Methods & Means subforum at Projects@Work that explain some of this. If you go to the site and do a search on "devaux", you’ll see them. (You have to register on the site, but it’s free.)

The URL is:
projectsatwork.com

You can also get more info at my Total Project Control website. There is a little exercise on how to compute DRAG in a very simple (FS) network at:

http://totalprojectcontrol.com/exercises/exercise2.html

And another diagram shows DRAG computations in a more complex network at:

http://totalprojectcontrol.com/tpc/tpc.html

As an aside: Mike, I think you’d find automated DRAG computation extremely useful in As Built Critical Path analysis for forensic purposes.

Hi Stepehn Hi Vinod.

I have no idea what you are talking about.

There are only two ways to compress a programme:

1. Change the logic.
2. Shorten the durations.

The art is to do either or both and still retain a viable programme.

Best regards

Mike Testro.

you can add bonus / incentives (in writing!)to make the contractor happy!

I am asking a dump question , is that mean acceleration schedule??

I don’t know a better tool than the correctly applied planner’s mind for squeezing timescales. The more detailed your plan, the more closely you can study it.

"crashing" a high level plan would require SS relationships and (gasp) negative lags and this sort of thing and is heading for trouble, imo. Break the plan down further until you can schedule it properly, then see where the gaps are.

We have on average one activity per man-shift. Of course this takes a lot of effort and investment in the plan production, which I have not seen a project outside of O&G put in (and I had 15 years exp before starting in O&G). Without very high level backing you will never get this kind of investment.

Try breaking down just your critical path to get a better view on that. And remember; there will always be a reasonable minimum, beyond which you are in what is technically termed "Lah Lah Land" ;)

Hi All

I understand now - it means shortening the time period.

Thank you.

Hi Vinod

I have no idea at all what you are talking about.

Please elucidate.

Best regards

Mike testro