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How many would admit to facilitating that "perfect" phased-gate resource-leveled MS Project plan only to face a massive re-plan caused some new cross-functional dependency? How long did it take to institute the change? The following every-day examples are more likely:

• Your plan is hereby obsolete - due to critical new feedback from the voice of the customer
• Your progress reports are inaccurate - "actuals" materially deviate from "planned"
• Your functional requirements need to change- caused by vendor performance issues early in the "execution phase"

In those types of projects, manufacturing process control* theory argues for empirical process control, such as the Scrum agile process

1. "It is typical to adopt the defined (theoretical) modeling approach when the underlying mechanisms by which a process operates are reasonably well understood.
2. When the process is too complicated for the defined approach, the empirical approach is the appropriate choice."

 

• In the first case, the Project Plan creates the cost and schedule estimates - it's a plan driven (command-and-control "waterfall") type of project.
• In the second case, the Product or Services Vision creates the feature estimates - it's a value and vision driven (agile) project.

Learn to recognize the difference between the two, formalizing your type of project early in the inception phase, before any commitments are made!

* Process Dynamics, Modeling, and Control

Ogunnaike and Ray, Oxford University Press, 1992

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