Posting here and in the Asta Powerproject forum:
Over the past four years, the Wikipedia page for "Critical path drag" has received 44,808 pageviews: an average of 11,202 per year, or 31 per day.
Yesterday, it received 138 pageviews, second most ONLY to Nov 9, 2016, the day Asta Powerproject released its first version that computed critical path drag.
So I'm wondering what happened yesterday? Any Spider or Asta (the only two out-of-the-box packages that compute drag, as far as I know) users/management have any idea?
Wikipedia's DIPP page (i.e., Devaux's Index of Project Performance) has also seen a steady rise in pageviews since May 24, 2019. Since Nov 17, 2019, it's been averaging 24 pageviews a day. It's extremely gratifying, as I think the DIPP is a hugely important addition to project management theory and the measuring-the-project-as-an-investment approach -- but I have NO idea why this has happened! Any idea, Vladimir? If Spider is responsible, thanks!
Also, I want to mention that PMI is supposed to be making available a draft of the PMBOK Guide 7th Edition on January 15. Since Spider and Powerproject have the advantage of providing this functionality, it might help you if you persuaded PMI's powers-that-be to include this fundamental CPM metric in the 7th Edition.
Fraternally in project management,
Steve the Bajan
Evgeny, looking back through my old emails, James Williams and I did discuss the GPCBoK at one time. I wrote to him in 2016:
"I looked through the scheduling info for the GPCBoK and it's pretty good -- but nowhere does it mention critical path drag or drag cost. "
James also invited me both to blog on PP, and to perhaps provide some training. But these happened at a time when I was very busy with personal issues, and I dropped the ball.
Overall, I have to say that I have found James to be very courteous, as well as interested in providing really good quality information.
Fraternally in project management,
Steve the Bajan
Stephen,
in parallel discussion I actually asked who were people who created Compendium
The answer was, that <<Over a period of 5 years ~600 practitioners from all locations, experience levels and industry sectors collaborated, shaped and proposed what they believed to be best tested and proven practices in relation to each of the 12 knowledge domains>>
I would expect, that out of these 600 you definately should have been the one of. Apparently not.
It makes me wonder about the value of this Guild and Compendium. Our world is gettin increasingly more tramsparent with information (just think of wikipedia and all open source SW), but somehow Compendium is not following that.
I though PMI was not open enough, but Guild seems to be even less open
Evgeny, I didn't take part in compiling the Compendium and don't know if drag is included. I may not have been asked because of not being a Guild member.
BTW, even if the Compendium includes drag, I seriously doubt it includes the DIPP, which in the last 8 months has suddenly started to draw as much attention as drag. And I believe the DIPP is an even more important project management metric.
(It goes without saying that I've always been willing to help the Guild, or PMI, or PRINCE2, or you, or anyone else trying to work with critical path drag or the DIPP!)
Fraternally in project management,
Steve the Bajan
Stehhen,
question, is the DRAG description included in Guild of Project Controls Compendium and Reference? (I am still trying to get hold of it)
Did you take part in developing of this Compendium ?
Hi, Vladimir and Marcus!
Yes, one almost gets the feeling that PMI is committed to ensuring the petrifaction of project management theory, techniques and metrics. Actually, with its embrace of agile, one could even argue it's taking PM backwards! (Has anyone ever thought to analyze the ABCP of an agile project? Agilistas might be be astounded to discover that their projects always take as long as their longest path, even tho' they never bother to plan the critical path! Amazing how that happens! "Maybe we should try planning and optimizing the longest path! We could call it the "Agilcrit Path!")
I tried to get critical path drag into the 6th edition of the PMBOK Guide as a technique for schedule recovery, to no avail. I guess schedule recovery is not important...
Marcus, I did not know that it was incorporated into Spider's Monte Carlo risk analysis. That's excellent -- probabilistic drag!
Vladimir, I still don't know why the DIPP's Wikipedia pageviews have increased so much over the past 8 months. Something must be going on - 200 hits per week over 30 weeks is significant! Since Spider is one of the very few s/w packages that has the functionality to incorporate both ROI/NPV and the value/cost of time (the two data items necessary to do DIPP, DIPP Progress Index and thus DIPP Tracking), I really think it would be advantageous to incorporate it as a standard part of Spider's report package. AND perhaps to include it in the Monte Carlo output! (Whoever the people are checking it out on Wikipedia might turn out to be potential customers!)
Happy New Year, all!
Fraternally in project management,
Steve the Bajan
Dear Steve,
you know that PMI includes in the PMBOK Guide only those tools and techniques that are widely used.
By widely used they mean widely used in the USA.
Both Spider Project and Asta are foreign software tools (Spider Project is Russian, Asta is British) and American software like MS Project and P6 do not have this functionality and so the chances for including Drag in the PMBOK Guide are low.
There are many other advanced tools available in Spider Project and widely used in Russia that are not mentioned in PMI standards, like multiple WBS, success probability trends, quantity based scheduling, skill scheduling, volume lags, activity Flex, conditional btanches and more.
In the last (6th) edition of the PMBOK Guide it was written that creating more than one link between two activities is a poor practice, the scheduler shall sekect one main dependency only! This says a lot about the competence of the team created this edition.
So I expect that any proposal to include advanced scheduling technique in the PMI standards will be rejected because it is not "widely used" in the USA.
Best Regards,
Vladimir