Estimating Project Timelines

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Statistically Estimating Project Timelines by Walter McIntyre

Statistics

Why is it that projects more often than not come in behind schedule and over budget? This question drives business executives crazy. Why shouldn’t there be an even split between on time project delivery and late project delivery? These are valid questions.

The answer lies in statistics and human nature. Let’s deal with statistics first. When events are independent, like in rolling a pair of dice, all possible results are independent of each other.  For example if I roll a set of two dice 20 times, I will get 20 results that range from two to twelve.  If I plot these results in a frequency plot, I will get a normal distribution (a bell curve for you non-statistical types). If I roll the dice another 100 times, I will get the same distribution. Why? Because the probability of getting a pair of 2’s on roll one of the dice is exactly the same as the probability of getting a pair of 2’s on rolls two, three, four, etc.  I could bore you with a discussion of the central limit theorem at this point, but let’s not.

Instead, let’s change the rules of dice rolling and magnetize the die so that if die one comes up 2, die number two will come up 2 also. Now the result of each roll of the dice is no longer independent. Instead the resulting sum is dependent upon whether one of the die comes up two or not. The resulting distribution of 100 rolls will be skewed instead of normal. What does this have to do with projects meeting time and budget goals?  Let me explain.

If you look at a project map, a Gantt chart for example, you will see that the tasks in the project are not independent.  They depend upon each other. For example, let’s say that task three cannot start until task one and task two are finished. This means that task three’s start time is not independent. It is dependent upon the finish time of tasks one and two. So, a delay in either task one or two will result in a late start of task three. Since there is dependency between the successful on time delivery of these tasks, the central limit theorem does not apply. Additionally, the dependency tends to push the time line to the right (late delivery).  If we were to run through tasks one, two and three 100 times, the distribution would be skewed to the right (late delivery).

The reason dependency, in this case, skews the timeline to the right is related to human nature. Estimators tend to over promise to satisfy the requirement of a bid process (work is rarely awarded to the bidder with the longest delivery time).  Workers tend to wait until the exact start date to begin work rather than start early. Surprises in the task schedule nearly always delay the completion of a task or schedule (how many times have you observed an unforeseen problem shorten the delivery time in a project?).

Practical Approach

So what is an executive supposed to do? Most look at a schedule and apply a 70% efficiency factor to it. In other words, assume the time line will be 30 % longer and more expensive than planned. Of course the more you know about a project, its customers, and the quality of your delivery processes, the better you can estimate.

Another Approach

Another approach for estimating a project timeline is using a tribal knowledge calculation.

(most ambitious completion time + (4 x the most probable completion time) + the worst case completion time)/6

I find this method to actually work pretty good. Typically you will get each of these completion time estimates from different groups.  It is also easy to sell.  One additional plus is the ability to give the results as a  date range instead of a specific date.

Operational Excellence

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Operational Excellence by Walter McIntyre

Trying to define operational excellence (OE) in a way that fits every organization is difficult.  It is also area of business strategy which is sometimes viewed myopically.  Myopically, in this case is an unbalanced approach to everything in the article below.  Remember , no customers equals no profit.

I prefer to break OE down into areas focused on customers, sustainability, innovation, performance, leadership and people. To be effective OE has to be relevant to all aspects of business operation. Therefore, OE may have a hierarchy of definitions as it is propagated throughout a business.  The core values are the same, but there will be differing levels of granularity, all focused on the core business objectives.  For example, an operator working on a turret has the same high level goal as someone from HR, but different granular objectives specific to their tasks.

I intend to keep this article fairly high level.  Future articles will drill down further. For now we can define the focus areas.  Bear in mind that these areas overlap substantially. It is not my intent to silo these focus areas.

Customers

Who are they, what are their needs, what do they want (this can be very different from needs),  how do they feel about your product or service, how do they feel about your competitors products and services (both direct and indirect competitors), and what do they want from your business?  This can be called the voice of the customer.  It is important to remember that selling is not about telling.  It is about listening.

Sustainability

Sustainability includes resource utilization, power and water consumption, waste production and  recycling, etc.  Some of these items are about controlling cost, while others are about being a positive member of the business’s community.

Innovation

Innovation includes advancing the business’s core and peripheral technologies, providing better products and services (customer’s perspective), and modernization of equipment and facilities.  A business must be aware of its customer’s needs and opinions, its competitor’s products and performance, and any gap in these areas.  If you are not innovating, you are probably moving toward business death.

Performance

Performance includes bottom line business metrics and all functions that drive them.  Some common metrics are safety, quality, delivery, and cost. Products and services delivered in specification, on time, at or under budget, and without safety incidents. This is the area where we are most used to seeing pull and flow, yield, visual management, value stream mapping, and continuous improvement initiatives like Lean and Six Sigma.  The picture below is a Gemba Board that is used to recognize a value stream’s performance.  It is one of many tools that tie performance to employee engagement.

Gemba Board Example of Operational Excellence Tool

Gemba Board Example of Operational Excellence Tool

Leadership

This is aligned with the supervision verses leadership dilema. Leaders are almost always more effective than supervisors.  In a leadership based environment, natural leadership bubbles to the surface to become upwardly mobile in an organization.  It is incumbent upon a business’s leadership to make sure everyone keeps the “main thing” the “main thing”.

People

Here we are focused on engagement, alignment, safety, and quality of life at work.  A safe work environment involves more than eliminating work related accidents.  It also includes an engaged environment where it is safe to share ideas and disagree as adults.  I would guess that most employees would rather work in an environment where everyone has each other’s back, instead of an environment where you are afraid to turn you back on anyone.

Dispersed Alignment

Parallel Alignment

A last comment for this article.  Communication is the lubrication that make OE possible.  Folks must know the business’s goals (including division, department and value stream goals), the goals and expectations they are being held accountable for, how they are doing against those expectations, and why all the above is important.

Myopic Thoughts

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Myopic life Can't see the forest for the trees

Myopic life Can’t see the forest for the trees

Myopic Thoughts by Walter McIntyre

Myopic vision: Near sited. Eye fails to resolve distant objects.

Prescription: Corrective glasses or surgery to focus images on the retina instead of in front of it.

Myopic life: Can’t see the forest for the trees. Impatience and failure to see the big picture.

Prescription: Look for balance in your perspective. Long term success is built on short term success. You can’t master a musical instrument in a day, nor can you accomplish great things over night. The best things in life come after hard work and long waits.

 

Entrepreneur Life

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Entrepreneur Life by Walter McIntyre

For the most part, all of us have a robust fear of failure. We are good at counting the cost of trying and failing. We are also pretty much aware of what we don’t want to lose. The result is that we miss opportunities due to not taking the risk of possible failure.

What we are not good at, is evaluating the risk of not trying. We decide to play it safe. Understand, though, you are guaranteed to fail if you don’t try. By playing it safe all the time, you limit your opportunity for success.

It comes down to balancing the difference between taking risks or taking chances. Taking a “calculated risk” is meaningful, but no one has ever heard of taking a “calculated chance”. A calculated risk is where you know what you need to do in order to be successful and you have some control over the criteria for success. For example, deciding to seek a certification in a profession field involves the risk of not making a passing grade. You control that risk with your effort.

Taking chances involves activities that put you in jeopardy in situations where no matter what you do, success is controlled by chance. For example, mortgaging your home in order to buy lottery tickets. You have hope, but understand that hope is not a plan.

The definition of an entrepreneur is someone who has a passion for seeing their dreams become reality. They live in fear of not trying. While other people fear losing something they already have, entrepreneurs fear not gaining something they want but don’t have.

So here is the point. Be an entrepreneur with your life. It is wise to be aware of the cost of failure, but at the same time, be aware of the cost of not trying.

Lean Marketing & Product Development

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Lean Marketing and Product Development by Walter McIntyre

Lean principles apply to any process based operation. I cannot think of any process that does not have non-value added components in it that create the opportunity for waste production.  In fact, by definition, a non-value added component in a process is waste.

Let’s take marketing for example and do something called lean marketing. Please remember that in a post of this size, I am leaving a lot to the imagination. Some businesses have marketing programs that start with the product/service and move outward to the customer. They call this customer focused because they do eventually think about the customer. This is not all bad because the customer is a part of the equation. The problem with this approach is that it is self-limiting.  In effect, it allows the product/service to define the target customers and, as a result, becomes growth limited by this boundary. This is the waste of missed opportunity

To balance the marketing equation, the business needs to also think in the opposite direction. That is, starting with potential customers and moving to the product/service. In this approach the potential customers defines the product/service and, as a result, is not limited by an artificial customer segment boundary.

In more detailed terms, in the product first scenario, the business defines the product/service, the price, and how it will be delivered.  Once these definitions are made, the business promotes the product or service to a targeted customer segment. As you can see, the product/service is defining the targeted customer. In a lean marketing program this is phase two, not phase one.

In the customer first scenario, the business connects with potential customers across multiple segments and establishes what the customer’s value (are willing to pay for), customer cost (price they are willing to pay), and how they expect the product/service to be delivered. Here the potential customer is defining the product. In lean marketing, we would now go the product/service side of the equation and build out to the customer.

Additionally, every business needs to realize that with the internet and social media, potential customers can easily compare products and services across multiple suppliers. This means that they can easily find the product or service that best fits their wants/needs. By using the product/service to define the customer, the business self-eliminates from non-targeted potential customers.

If instead, the business first allows potential customers to define the product/service (phase one), the product/service can be tailored to fit different customer segments (phase two).  This in turn allows the marketing program to be tailored to target multiple customer segments. This tailoring takes advantage of the internet and social media by addressing the specific needs of different customer segments.

I look at this as an application of Deming’s “Plan-Do-Check-Adjust” cycle. Define the potential customer’s needs, apply what you learned to the product/service, evaluate market effectiveness, and use the evaluation to find improvement ideas. This process is like a wheel that continually turns over and over again throughout a product/service life cycle. The result is better performance and a longer product/service life cycle by way of waste reduction.

As a final note, this approach is synchronized to the development process. The PDCA cycle, focusing on the customer first, will help to prevent misunderstandings (waste) and missed targets (waste) because the customer becomes a key part of the development process. The more times the PDCA wheel is turned in a development project, the more input the customer will have, the less likely the development team will miss the target. The target in this case is the right product/service being delivered to the customer at the targeted project cost and profit margin.

Walter McIntyre’s Incomplete Success Thoughts

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Walter McIntyre Incomplete Success Thoughts

Can you remember when you graduated from high school or college? The feeling that you could change the world and that you could be and do anything you choose? Can you also remember the day you realized that maybe you were not going to change the world and that you were limited to what you could be?

I can. I can also remember feeling disappointed in myself when my dreams for success did not immediately come true. Fortunately, I had a wise adviser in my life that helped me put things into perspective.

My dad would always tell me to keep the faith and keep moving forward in my life. Dreams are what they are because they are not easy to achieve. They require hard work. He was right.

He told me a story once about his first job out of high school. It was a manufacturer with seven assembly steps.  When hired, he was trained to work one of the assembly steps. What he did next was the difference maker. On his breaks and weekends he would have the other operators train him to operate every piece of machinery and every assembly step. His goal was to become the most knowledgeable and most valuable employee at the plant.

The result was that two years later he was the highest paid non-management employee in the facility. This was due to the fact that he out worked everyone. He became the MVP to plant management by paying a higher personal price than others in the facility.

I have had to re-invent myself three times during my career. One was by choice and two were forced on me. In all three cases I had to take a step back in pay and prestige in order to keep forward momentum in my career. Also in all three cases, I worked to learn and grow in the new field and eventually found myself with better pay and position than the earlier jobs.

Challenge is not to be feared and neither is change.  These “C” words should be embraced because they are opportunity in disguise. If you are not facing challenge or change in your life, you are not moving forward. Consider them blessings.

Here are Walter McIntyre’s Incomplete Guidelines to Success in Life:

  • Do not seek money as a goal. It has no staying power. When you spend it, it’s gone and so is its value.
  • Set goals around things that have lasting value no matter what happens to you or the economy. Knowledge, reputation, and character are good choices.
  • If you don’t ask for it you won’t get it. Not asking for help when you need it is one of the biggest failures you can have. We always stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us. If you don’t know something, ask.
  • Seek to be the “go to” person in your organization.
  • You will reap what you sow. Invest in your growth.  Learn everything you can, seek opportunity and challenge, become the person you dreamed of being.
  • If success is where preparation meets opportunity, then you better focus on being prepared. You cannot always control opportunity, but you are totally in control of being prepared. Don’t be the person who just saw the best opportunity flash by them, but were not prepared to seize it.
  • Big successes are made up of small successes. Pay attention to detail and the “small stuff” so that the “big” stuff is cut down to size.
  • Know your tools and use them. When I exercise on my treadmill, I will watch YouTube videos to expand my knowledge.  Recently I needed to help a client with a software development problem.  I found several videos that specifically covered how others had dealt with the same issue. The following week, when talking with my client, he stated that he didn’t know I had that level expertise in software development.
  • You cannot claim greatness. Greatness is attained by accepting the challenges life gives you.

There is more to this discussion, but I will leave to the reader to continue the discussion.  The list is incomplete because your life is different than mine. What we have in common are the true north principles of life. These are the things that do not change with the ebb and flow of our lives.

Don’t be discouraged with where you are now. Instead have a vision of what you want to be and what you want to do. Then set out to make it happen.

Some Thoughts

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Some Thoughts by Walter McIntyre

Some thoughts from my day.

The universe is big and I’m not the center of it.

Who knows more about this than I do about me?

Find out who’s on my team and link arms with them.  Form a personal advisory group.

Does life happen to you or do you happen to life?

Surround yourself with the best in class.  You can’t soar with the eagles if you are hanging with the turkeys.

What question do you not want someone to ask you?  Answer it and own it.

“I don’t need any help” is a huge lie.

“Will you help me?” Only takes 20 seconds of courage.

Managing an Innovation Team

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Managing an Innovation Team by Walter McIntyre

Innovation is as much about failure as it is success.  Innovation thrives in a culture that is open to challenging the status quo and allowing employees to make mistakes as new ideas are generated. Organizations that do not tolerate failure simply cannot innovate in a way that we would call successful.

Managing an organization that has an innovative culture can be stressful, as there is bound to be friction as new ideas rub up against established ways of doing things and other employee’s ideas. This friction is good if managed right.  This means creating a safe environment for commenting on ideas, introducing ideas and “sharpening the sword” against each other.

Here are a few tactics for creating and maintaining an innovative environment.

Demand Speed

Faster completion of project tasks and phases, ideas backed by “one pager” documents, short meetings that have agendas and “cut to the chase” will underscore how business is done. Innovation is sometimes based upon rolling out ideas, testing them and moving on as quickly as possible.

Define the Gap

By defining the gap or opportunity where you want to focus your energies, you can keep the team on target.  Make sure that the customer plays a part in defining the opportunity or gap. The ultimate waste of time is to work on something that the targeted audience does not care about.

Get Outside the Box

Spend more time listening to customers (and potential customers).  Spend time watching and listening to competitors.  Include mavens in the targeted markets, new suppliers and folks outside the innovation expertise window in your idea evaluation process.  The point is to broaden the footprint of your organization’s thinking.

Don’t Get Caught Up in Small Stuff

Successful writers do not edit while they write.  They get the creativity flowing first and correct later. This defines innovation in writing (a totally innovative process).  From a business point of view, focusing on the idea and its supporting, or detracting, points, is the path to innovation.  Avoid getting caught up in spelling, grammar, color, etc.  There will be time for that when you are ready to present outside the innovation group.

Be Part of the Team

One of the characteristics of a high performance work group is the lack of visible evidence of a command and control network within the innovation team.  This facilitates trust, communication and conservation of time.  When a leader is out among those they lead, there is a reduced need for formal reporting and meetings.

Challenge People to Learn

Assign employees to projects teams that are working on ideas outside of their expertise.  This enables fresh ideas to be introduced and forces more thorough discussions.  Additionally, this expands the talent and knowledge footprint for your employees.

Pythagorean Theorem

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Pythagorean Theorem by Walter McIntyre

Pythagoras may have come up with the Pythagorean theorem, or maybe one of his students. It is impossible to know for sure, so I’ll give him credit. We understand the theorem as the sum of the squares of the sides adjacent to the right angle in a right triangle, equal the square of the side opposite the right angle (hypotenuse). a2 + b2 = c2. See below.

Pythagorean Theorem

If you are reading this blog post, you probably already know this. But…can you see the other relationship.  The area of the squares associated with the sides adjacent to the right angle, when added together, equal the area of the square associated with the side opposite the right angle.

This is another piece of number magic. The approach of considering the areas of the squares in the Pythagorean Theorem is used in boat hull and airplane design.

The Magic of Numbers

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The Magic of Numbers by Walter McIntyre

Contrary to how you may have learned math, the story of numbers is one of magic. Numbers fill our lives in ways we never think of. From IP addresses to the television channel you watch, numbers allow us to differentiate between categories and events.

To see the real magic behind our numbers, try this experiment. Solve this equation (4+15)/(29*16). Now solve this equation without converting it to our modern numbering system, (IV+XIV)/(XXIX*XVI). The Roman numerals were for documentation and it was not possible to perform operations with them. The Romans used Arabic numbers, similar to what we use today for commerce, where operations were needed. Aren’t you glad you were taught math in our modern numbering system rather that Roman numerals? Imagine how much harder long division would have been.

Here is another piece of number magic. The constant pi is equal to 3.14 (plus an infinite number of places after the decimal point). But what is pi and where did it come from? Performing this next experiment in number magic back in Jr. Hi. would have made your journey through geometry a lot easier.

Get a dinner plate and a sewing measuring tape. Measure the circumference of the plate as exactly as you can. Also, do an exact measurement of the plate’s diameter. If you multiple the diameter by 3.14 (pi), you will get the exact same number as the circumference. If you do the same experiment with any round object, no matter how big or small, you will always get the same result. Isn’t is comforting to know that some things in the universe are constant?

I know this sounds crazy, but a few years back I had a vehicle that calculated instantaneous and trip miles per gallon. I noticed an increase in my vehicle’s fuel economy that did not agree with what I was seeing at the pump. It was 3.5 miles to the gallon better than reality (my fuel economy was worse than calculated by the vehicle’s computer).

I measured the diameter of my tires, ground to top of the tire, put the appropriate air pressure in them and measured their diameter again. The difference was 0.38 inches. I used pi and to determine the distance covered by one revolution of my tires before and after increasing the air pressure. The calculated difference in fuel economy was 3.48 miles to the gallon.

Basically, my vehicle’s computer assumed a specific diameter of the tires and was not programmed to adjust to changes in diameter. I know that you are thinking this was a waste of time and effort, but if the engineer who programmed your vehicle’s computer had not know how to use pi, or if pi were not a constant as in the experiment above, the fuel economy display on your dashboard would not be possible.

Who says there isn’t magic in the world?