Continuing with what we discussed last week. Putting together budgets.A well-designed and run program is generally broken into phases. Progress should stop for evaluation at the end of each phase. This adds some time and expense to the program, but allows mid-course corrections, and ideally saves more money than it costs.
Any schedule has fulcrum points, where delays in one section of the program will hold back all progress on the program. Figure out where these fulcrum points are likely to be, and don’t overlap them with other parts of the project necessarily.
Schedule duration is often generated as a weighted average of the best case duration, the worst case duration, and the expected duration. Frequently, (BC + 4 * Exp + WC) / 6
That applies four times as much weight to the expected duration.
When examining a schedule next to a cost-time chart, one can quickly tell if they line up. If the cost and schedule are imbalanced, whichever one is slated for a longer time scale is likely to set the actual time scale.
Performance Measurement Systems and Earned Value Systems are processes by which you assess the efficiency of your current work. In essence, compare the amount of progress you should have gotten for your money spent to your actual progress for money spent.
EV systems make it far easier to assess the health of the program, and make the managers responsible for the cost, schedule, and content of their programs. However, these systems are very expensive