From the invention of the Gantt Chart Jump ahead just 46 years , and you will find Kelly and Walker visually representing a mathematical model with the use of arrow diagramming method, which subsequently became known as “activity diagramming method” or ADM, a sample of which is shown below. An ADM network is logically intuitive. One can “see” how activities are logically linked and how the network as a whole might be impacted by a change to one activity. Visualization is again the key to understanding the model.
However, there is yet another major departure from the past which coincides with Kelly and Walker; it is the advent of the computer as a tool in the production of time-scaled, logically linked schedules. For the first time in the 27,000 years of calendar and planning history, a machine is interposed between the plan and the planner.
Unbeknownst to Kelly and Walker, the combination of a mathematical model for a network schedule and computer power to drive the model would result in the bifurcation of planning and scheduling. Entering data in tables became a new way to visualize schedules. But 27,000 years of recorded history teaches us that a series of numbers is not the natural way to see time and time-scaled plans. Over the subsequent decades, a Byzantine intellectual structure has calcified around the original CPM thinking to the point where some earlier practitioners are now in a state of rebellion against the malformed manifestations of their original conceptual framework.
The evolution of critical path scheduling software and the revolution of computing technology from the 1970s, along with the inability of ADM to model start-to-start and finish-to-finish relationships, sped the demise of ADM in favor of PDM and the dominance of scheduling over collaborative planning. Progress, such as it is, has continued in juggernaut fashion over the last three decades to the point where some will openly brag about having a 50,000 activity schedule!
While many still hold collaborative planning sessions, the last major technology introduced into the process was by 3M. Yes, this was the sticky note. Until recently, the use of technology has not evolved much beyond sticky notes and butcher block paper.
Current Time-Scaled Planning Methods
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Most projects, regardless of type or size, include some sort of planning or scheduling session early in their lives and potentially later in the project as well. The frequency, extent of collaboration, content and scope for such sessions can vary dramatically from project to project and from firm to firm. Ranging from Gilbane Building Company’s “card trick” scheduling and planning session to PMA’s “full-wall” scheduling sessions, these time-scaled planning sessions can take various shapes, but the goal is the same: to engage a collaborative group of project stakeholders to collectively create the roadmap to a successful project. For the purposes of this paper, we will refer to these planning sessions generically as “full-wall planning sessions.”
Following the session, the activities were input into Primavera. However, as is evident from the picture, there was limited logic identified during the meeting. In fact, of the 147 activities identified, 78 of them were constrained within Primavera so that they would fall on the identified dates. Also, there were a large number of open-ends. As such, the network was really a bar chart rather than a CPM network with calculated dates. Obviously, float values of the activities in Primavera were mostly useless.
This schedule proved to be a useful tracking tool and work list, but it was not particularly helpful to demonstrating the effects of delaying the start of an activity, or extending or crashing an activity duration.
For most of the world, this is currently state of the art. However, in our next post we will investigate some of the exciting new technologies gaining favor in the industry.