20 to 30 minutes
Ask the participants to imagine that enough time has passed and it’s time to start the second weekly cycle.
This is the status until the end of the week:
- Buying the server: done
- Buying Ethernet cables: done
- Replacing the old Ethernet cables with new ones: not started yet (cables arrived too late)
Explain that most projects limit themselves to calculating a percentage complete, which they can do by using different methods that are usually based on giving a weight and a percent complete to each element at the bottom of the map, and then calculating the parent elements with a weighted average.
While calculating a percentage complete is useful, it’s not as important as forecasting:
- In typical fixed-scope projects: forecast for the duration and cost
- In fixed-duration projects: forecast for the amount of scope that can be completed by the end of the project and the cost forecast (unless cost is fixed as well)
There are different ways of forecasting, ranging from simple, more or less intuitive ones to the advanced ones using Earned Schedule and similar methods. For people who have just started using structured project management methods, it’s best to use a simple, intuitive one. So, ask them to spend 10 minutes working in groups and use a simple rule of thumb to forecast the time and cost required for completing the project, based on the information above and their own imagination.
When the time is up, ask each facilitator to present their results. Ask the others to give comments, and add your own when needed.
This is an example of a rough forecast:
The “infrastructure” deliverable has two parts: the server and the network. The first one is our dependency, because we need it in order to start installing the applications from Wave 1, but the network is already in place and we’re only improving it – so, even though the network is a little late, since it can be ready before we go live with Wave 1, there’s no real delay to the whole project.
Everything we’ve done so far has cost us as expected, and we’ve not found any reason to believe that the future work will be more or less expensive. So, our forecast for costs is the same as in the original plan.
As they proceed in their project, especially in longer projects, forecasting won’t be as simple as this, but still a simple, intuitive method like this is good enough. After they become comfortable with their project management system, they can gradually start using more advanced methods of measurement.
Another way of thinking about it is this: If your projects are simple and small, the rough forecasts are good enough, whereas if they are going to be large and complicated, you may need to hire a project planner to take care of such measurements anyway ;)