Estimation and Scheduling of Work
One of the reasons projects spin out of control is poor estimation and scheduling of work. There have been tons of material on estimation but scheduling has not got the same coverage.
One of the common pitfalls of scheduling is mapping a project plan estimated numbers to a team member at 40 hours a week. Let’s run though this with an example, John is working on a 6 month project that is assuming that he would be working for 40 hours a week for the next six months. Besides working on this project, John has to attend a regular staff meeting, take care of some production support issues, take part in a virtual team for planning, attend some training and mentor a new employee. Also, John is planning to take three days off around Thanksgiving to spend the week with his family.
End result is that John this month can spend only 25 hours week on an average on this project but the project manager has gone ahead and budgeted at John to spend 40 hours a week. Poor scheduling like this that does not take care of the actual number of hours that a team member can commit and ignores vacation and holiday times are doom their projects to failures. If your project plan is based on inaccurate data, how on earth do you expect to ship on time.
There is a simple solution to this – Always plan with the correct numbers of hours a team member can spend and include vacation/holidays/buffer time.
Syndicated from Ashvil's Blog