Challenges to Scheduling and Cost Control: A Brief

Challenges to Scheduling and Cost Control

In discussing “general project management and application development or rapid application development (RAD) models”, we can look at PMBOK, SWEBOK, or packaged project management implementations, like Austin™, or Double Cho Latte™ (Open Source GNU license Project Management tool).

These models seemed to vary depending upon the project management needs and were tailored to the project requirements management in terms of scope, complexity, and time to market vs. accuracy of delivery. PMBOK seemed to be more suited for general project management where task decomposition into a formalized Work Breakdown Structure and tracking budget costs was paramount. All are focused on delivering the project deliverables, however, for example, SWEBOK is more driven as a requirements analysis and specifications process than a WBS as in PMBOK. Six Sigma is more driven by “zero defect” product quality, and less by a deliverable timeline, i.e. “deadline”. PMBOK is more driven by a project deadline, still with an eye on quality, but allows more substitution if there is an obstacle to goal. Six Sigma or SWEBOK might insist on sacrificing timeline to make sure that *exact* part compliances were met. Thus, PMBOK serves well in a more general context and Six Sigma and SWEBOK at a specifications context.

The packaged project management applications are targeted at specific markets for rapid application development, a.k.a, “RAD” (Ed: & deployment, RADD). As such project requirements for standard types of implementations might be already available in templates where a WBS or a project specification might largely already be worked out, saving time and duplication of project management efforts, and also gaining the distribution of learning curve cost over an industry rather than being subsumed entirely by a single company. A good example of this is Rational Rose™, that uses UML and industry standard XML outputs to be able to express common types of projects/problems as “templates” that can be purchased and then “filled out” with individual site logistical information.

Unless one is great at combinatorial mathematics and discrete mathematics, it might not be a good idea to combine multiple models, since there are inevitably conflicts and overlap between them. As Abraham Lincoln is rumored to have said “A house divided against itself cannot stand”. However PMBOK models can be used to manage a portfolio of projects, which at a more micro-level might be managed by a project specific type of tool or model, e.g., AutoCAD for CAD/CAM, SWEBOK process for new software, Rational Rose for an integrated database design. Most of the good tools have the ability to export data in standard format so that the products can interoperate to some extent, although that process may largely be manual.

Challenges to Scheduling and Cost Control Processes: A Brief

Challenges to Scheduling and Cost Control