To date, improvements to PM tools have been evolutionary and not revolutionary. All the PM tools are still based on the PERT/CPM approach. The improvements that occur with each round of new PM tools are merely “bells and whistles” (e.g., better tracking of resources, uploading from spreadsheets) or perhaps enabling the tool to be used over the internet. Unfortunately, a 50-year old methodology delivered over the internet is still a 50-year old methodology.Fundamentally, the PERT/CPM approach suffers from three (3) major flaws:
- Task duration is an input. However, many factors (e.g., availability and productivity of resources, dependencies among tasks, hours worked by employees) affect the duration of a task. Thus, in the real world, task duration is actually an output.
- Productivity impacts are not considered. In current PM tools, labor can be added to or removed from a task with no impact on the productivity of labor applied to the task. Today’s tools assume all resources are equal. Yet, we know they are not. New employees or junior-level employees do not get as much work done in the same period of time as experienced, senior-level employees. Also, in current PM tools people can be scheduled for overtime with no impact on their productivity. However, anyone who has worked a significant amount of overtime can validate that productivity decreases due to fatigue or burnout. Working a little overtime on a couple of days usually has a negligible impact, but long durations of working overtime can have significant impacts on labor productivity. Lastly, it is a known fact (especially on software development projects) that throwing more people at a task often makes the task fall further behind schedule due to lower labor productivity as experienced people train the new people and the new people make mistakes that must be corrected.
- Corrective actions are not captured. The actual management decisions and actions that PM’s take during a project are not included. However, these corrective actions can significantly influence progress. Current tools only match resources against task assignments. As a result, current PM tools allow for static planning, but not dynamic reaction and re-planning. In current PM tools, if it looks like a task will run late (e.g., based on the Earned Value schedule performance index, SPI), the project manager must develop several different plans through trial-and-error to see if they will work. The current tools do not help the project manager actually manage the project. The tools only allow the PM to develop multiple, static plans with no insight.
REf - http://www.dynamicprogressmethod.com/
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