Planning, its all about control

The nearer (in terms of spotting and addressing deviations from expected or required behaviour) we can put our control inputs to the behaviour we are trying to alter, the smoother and less stressful our management becomes. Perhaps idealistically the aim would be to have low-tolerance autonomous control mechanisms (like cars’ cruise controls or water cylinder thermostats) which require no management monitoring and control. But many systems, particularly around the human elements of a project environment, can’t readily be subjected to such mechanisms.

In any event, what we need to have control of is a crucial point of understanding. Just as we have a lot of potential things we could monitor, so too numerous things we can exert control over exist. Just think of a car; the obvious things are road speed (controlled through accelerator and brake) direction (steering wheel), engine speed (gears, accelerator, and road speed), less obviously, cabin temperature (climate control system), navigation and entertainment (infotainment system), communications (indicators, horn, and onboard computer), fuel and other systems condition (petrol gauge and other instruments) and so on. Just as in a project, lots of stuff that needs to be sorted out, included, excluded, or prioritised before we can start planning. Not all, of course are equally important or constantly important; so which matter and why is an early question as we start to think of planning.

This is, of course, context dependent – in our driving example we might completely sacrifice the control of fuel consumption because we face a time-critical emergency and speed trumps other considerations such as economy. It seems obvious to say that in a time critical project we should have control of the timeline or, should the project be resource constrained, that we need control of the budget (or whatever the resource is). But, to look at it in a more nuanced way, if we accept that Critical Success Factors are just that, critical, then we really must surely have control over the mechanisms that achieve them. Equally, where high levels of cost, benefit or business risk are present, wouldn’t we want to ensure that appropriate controls were in place?

So, before planning can start, we really need to understand the project’s ‘context’; what matters most in the hierarchy of constraints? What are the senior stakeholders’ needs and expectations? Which risks give greatest cause for concern? With context understood we can start planning because we should know what we are going to need control of. For example, in July 2007 London won the bid for the 2012 Olympic Games. From that point, until delivery was completed, it was clear that the need for schedule control was imperative – The Queen and James Bond, not to mention the rest of the watching world, couldn’t be asked to delay their participation if we’d lost control of the schedule! Critical Path Analysis and an abundance of milestones would have represented the key concepts in the plan.

Conversely, if you were to be asked to manage the project for the next generation of ejector seat, focusing on the control of the timeline might be counterproductive. Surely the focus of control, and therefore the plan, would need to be on quality assurance – after all, if the final product doesn’t behave as expected, it will spoil someone’s whole day! Thus, the process inputs, quality of materials and resources along with the product design and development lifecycles would predominate.

So, the long and short of it is that prior to jumping into planning it is important to understand where you need to be able to exert control such that an appropriate plan can be built. Starting with a Gantt chart simply won’t do this.

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