Project Scheduling

Now that you are familiar with CPM, the geometric order response to the demands of scheduling, let's focus on the living order approach, pull scheduling. A pull schedule is by its very nature a work in progress. Creating it is a collaborative process, and it must be updated regularly in response to current conditions. As you saw in Lesson 6, an initial pull schedule is often created during a structured collaborative session with key project members using color-coded Post-it notes that can be removed or repositioned as necessary. The orange notes in Figure 7-1 represent deliverables; the yellow notes represent steps required to produce the deliverables. After all stakeholders agree, a schedule like this is typically translated into a digital format, such as Microsoft Project or Microsoft Excel.

Figure 7-1. Pull schedules are often created with Post-it Notes on a white board

In a pull schedule, it is essential to define the project's deliverables and handoffs, which, cumulatively, add up to the project's outcome. That's why color-coded Post-it notes are so useful; they allow you to see all the project's deliverables at a glance. A pull schedule also makes it easy to see the steps required to produce a deliverable, and to identify when the handoff to the next phase of the project occurs. As in a relay race, where runners pass the baton from one to the other, the handoffs are crucial to a project's success. If a runner drops the baton, it often doesn't matter how quickly she ran her leg of the race, because the other runners will never be able to make up for the time lost in retrieving the dropped baton. The same is true in living order project management, in which the flow of work from one phase to the next is of paramount concern, and in which successful handoffs between phases can mean the difference between a project that fails or succeeds.

Creating a Pull Schedule

You can create a pull schedule electronically, using any number of scheduling programs. But to encourage the kind of collaborative conversations that encourage all stakeholders to become pull thinkers, it's helpful to start by gathering all stakeholders in a room with a large white board (or an entire wall) set aside to use as the schedule work area. Working backwards from a target completion date, stakeholders place color-coded Post-it notes on the schedule to indicate when they will complete various tasks. No participant is allowed to move another participant's Post-it note. Instead, as scheduling conflicts become apparent, stakeholders need to negotiate with each other, repositioning Post-it notes only after stakeholders agree on a solution to each scheduling problem.

Because the people creating the schedule are the actual people responsible for the various activities, the process inevitably focuses on activities that are dependent on other activities. For example, passage of a key internal user test for new software would need to precede release of the software to an expanded beta test group. The end result of this kind of planning is a schedule with far greater team buy-in than can be produced with CPM alone.

The step-by-step process of creating a pull schedule is hard to grasp in the abstract. To really learn how it works, you have to do it. But you can get a better sense of the steps involved in pull scheduling by watching these videos:

• A quick three-minute introduction to pull planning schedules in construction: "Pull Planning: Miron Construction Co".
  

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