Module 6
Remember the seven "P's": Proper Prior Planning Prevents Pretty Poor Performance.
For complex projects, you often need a "plan for the plan." If the planning process requires significant manpower, it will require its own budget. Often these complex projects can be dividend into stages, with the first sage planning the later stages. But often significant portions of the planning must be done before there is a "project."
Eventually your planning will result in a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) that is used to control the projects cost and schedule. For the small and mid-sized engineering and construction projects I am familiar with, the WBS is the project planning tool. The design contract or construction bid set details of deliverables, from which one works backwards. For larger or more complex projects, significant work is required prior to the WBS and this is, ideally, done in a hierarchical process. Special care is needed to plan the interfaces between divisions or specialties, and this often requires lengthy coordination and planning.
One not-so-pleasant memory I have: As a young engineer, I was on the staff of the area manager, who had a general superintendent that he was afraid of. The area manager required me to develop ambitious schedules. He would mail them to the general superintendent and tell him "This is the schedule Perkins made for you." Part of the area manager's fear was personalities. But today I believe that he was more afraid that if he had proper coordination meetings with the general superintendent, the super would have pointed out personnel and equipment needed to meet the deadlines, and these were items the area manager did not have. The deadlines were set by contracts the area manager had agreed to, without consulting with the super.
This conflict between sales and production is also common in industries other than construction. The salesman promises whatever she has to to get the job, the engineering and production managers protest that they do not have the time, personnel, or facilities for the job. CEO's (like my area manager above) see this conflict and decide the way to manage it is by not managing it. They say they are "flatting the organization" or using a "self directed team" and try to let the sales and the engineering fight it out while the CEO is somewhere else. Another method is to use project management, appoint a project manager to sort out the new job or contact. Great, but, unless the project manager has the commitment and support of the CEO, project management will not work either.
Despite my cynicism, one important benefit of the logical approach presented by Chapter 6 is that it will expose the lack of support and/or conflicts early in the game. This might not solve them, but does give the project manager knowledge to design a workaround.