Transcript below:
Brandies: Our guests today are Daniel Molnar, Project Controls Lead of the Northeast region of Merck Pharmaceuticals and Tim Mather, Chief Technical Officer at PMA Consultants and PMA Technologies. I’m Brandies Dunagan, a social media specialist at i.c.stars.
Today we’re going to discuss the impact of the Graphical Path Method on scheduling and planning.
Brandies: So Dan, can you describe your role at Merck?
Dan: Sure. As project controls lead, I tell everybody it’s a pretty easy job. My job is to tell project managers that they’re over budget and behind schedule. But truly, the division that I work for manages over a billion dollars of capital a year, and our role is to support project management teams in developing their schedules and their budgets and keeping track of the progress of the work.
Brandies: Okay, and since we’re talking about the Graphical Path Method, Tim, can you tell us a little bit about the history of GPM, Netpoint, and a little bit about the founder, Dr. Gui Ponce de Leon, PE, CEO and Managing Principal at PMA Consultants?
Tim: I sure can. So Netpoint is really the outgrowth of the GPM as conceived by Dr. Gui, as we can call him, because the Ponce de Leon PE Lead AP PMP takes too long. Dr. Gui came to the United States from Lima, Peru in the 60s and was the first Ph.D. in Construction Management at the University of Michigan; and his doctoral thesis is on the topic of alter algorithms for the computation of critical path networks. So he’s been thinking about this stuff for a while because I think he got his doctorate in ’72 and activated PMA shortly thereafter.
Our organization has grown over the years. It’s a nationwide project and program consulting firm. We do project controls work. We also do owner’s representation work and expert witnessing when projects go wrong – which we would never have to do for Merck because Dan is in place to manage that.
Brandies: Of course.
Tim: So Dr. Gui conceived of this idea of a different way of calculating the critical path. We started to work on the software maybe in 2006 or 2007 to bring his idea to life, and his idea was really to graphically and gesturally be able to manage a project schedule versus the database driven method that were used in CPM.
Brandies: Okay, and since we’re asking about CPM and the Graphical Path Method versus the Critical Path Method, just so we understand a little bit better about CPM, and we understand this traditional approach to develop project plans- you’ve introduced GPM as the evolution of that approach. Can you talk about some of the weaknesses that Netpoint addresses in CPM?
Tim: Sure. CPM was originally conceived in the 1950s as a method of modeling a schedule in order to create a timeline of a project. Nobody had done that. Prior to that, the state of the art was a Gantt chart. It didn’t have the kind of logical ties for predecessors and successors that you would find in CPM. In order to accomplish that, the developers of CPM used a formula that they called the early date and late date; forward pass and backward pass; and it’s a way of running through the network of activities and calculating what the early start date would be for each activity and then each successor activity, and then on the way back, what the late start date would be for each successor activity. Those late dates and early dates are kind of forced in CPM and the big breakthrough in GPM, although there’s a lot that can be talked about in GPM. But the big breakthrough is that because we don’t use that forward pass and backward pass, we have a kind of different algorithm. We’re able to set activities right on their planned date.
So whenever the planner wants the activity put on the date that’s where it stays. In a typical CPM application if you put an app, say you put an activity on March first, but it’s predecessor activity ends let’s say February third, then CPM is going to move your activity back to February fourth, unless you constrain it. Whereas in GPM, wherever you put the activity that’s where it sits and it just gives the planner so much more control over the way the network develops and it’s a much more intuitive way for non-scheduling experts to look at a plan and to help develop a plan and part of the big difference between GPM and CPM, is that with GPM – with it’s very intuitive and accessible graphics – you can access subject matter experts who normally get kind of confused by a CPM application. They can engage in a GPM planning session in a way that a CPM planning session kind of falls flat.
Brandies: That’s really interesting. Dan, I know that you’ve been using GPM and Netpoint at your company for the last three years. In light of what Tim just mentioned about the history of Netpoint and it being a solution for planning and scheduling in the construction industry, it seems that it has transcended that role. Can you talk about how you think it can be applied to different industries like your organization with pharmaceuticals?
Dan: Well from an owner’s standpoint, the CPM scheduling is great for the physical construction and managing the work in the field. However, as an owner we need to see a project from end to end with multiple stakeholders, multiple parties that are involved in the development of a holistic schedule. This tool, and also on the owner’s side and to our clients – the operating facilities, the plan ownerships – they don’t have access to a Primavera or Microsoft Project. They don’t have the skill set or the knowledge to develop a CPM schedule. This tool is really useful in bringing multiple stakeholders together to take a holistic view of the schedule and in relatively short order have everybody understand the key objectives to the schedule.
In addition, once you have that holistic view for those groups that don’t have the skill set for, like I said for your CPM software – this tool is readily available for them to put their ideas out there and to have planning sessions, collaborative sessions, to get some buy-in from those stakeholders in pretty short order. So it’s really worked very well over the last three years here at Merck.
Brandies: That’s pretty great. So, it sounds like to me that CPM still has its place. While on the job sites and what not, that type of system is more critical to people who literally work on that field, on that end – but, when trying to communicate to other stakeholders, all the managing partners and everybody who are subject matter experts, it might be better to have something that is more layman, something that is easily translatable and enables better and clearer communication – and allowing everybody to participate without necessarily needing the skill set to build CPM models.
Dan: Exactly. A lot of times in our project world we may put that backend or those points of integration when we’re presenting it to the stakeholders. Traditionally in the past, before GPM it would just be a spreadsheet, or Microsoft, or PowerPoint, something that really didn’t have any semblance of logic in it. This at least you can incorporate logic but it’s also very intuitive to use.
Tim: Maybe, Dan you can describe what an interactive planning session is like at Merck, you get the stakeholder in a room and what kind of interactions do you have? How does it actually work? Do you project the image up on the wall and people talk about it?
Dan: Before Netpoint? Or after Netpoint?
Tim: Actually, let’s do both.
Dan: Traditionally, before Netpoint when you had these interactive planning sessions you would get a good twenty stakeholders into a room, and you’d have a facilitator with post-its, and they’d put a timeline across the room and then they would just start putting post-its up on the wall and try to guess when things would be ready and coordinate, “Okay I’m going to be done with this activity and you can pick it up here,” and then by the end of a four-hour session you would have a room, a wall full of post-its and a schedule that you would have to take that – hopefully roll that paper up and not lose any of the detail and take that back to a CPM scheduling software, and then two or three weeks later come back out with something that says, “Here’s the results from our interactive planning session.”
Tim: I think sometimes things get lost in that translation to logic that people thought would work, doesn’t work and things like that.
Dan: Absolutely. Since rolling this out and using this in sessions, not only has the session time been cut in half, but you can very easily schedule backwards as well as forwards, which is another advantage that GPM has over CPM. You’re looking to make an end date but you know that it’s going to take three months to do this last activity. If you start putting it backwards then you may see some clashes or conflicts with activities that are moving forward, and you see that in real time, and you can make adjustments and you know with the logic that’s in there, you get a very clear picture of the critical paths on your schedule. And then when you’re done with that you have something that can be exported at your starting point into your CPM software. So you’re taking a whole process that takes a matter of a week and putting into a day.
Tim: And I know other clients for sure, Gilbane has pretty much perfected the art now of getting the group together, putting the plan into Netpoint and then just pushing the button and creating in Primavera the starting point from which they’ll build the rest of the plan. But at least all the stakeholders have a clear idea of the major milestones, the critical handout points and that kind of thing.
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Brandies: Sounds like to me, what I understand is that Netpoint saves time, it assures clear communication, it’s more efficient. It is really intuitive, which means that people who don’t necessarily work specifically in project management or planning can truly see a graphical representation of the track the plan has, and I think that’s a real value add.
Dan: Absolutely.
Brandies: Now that we’ve had a really good conversation about Netpoint versus CPM and kind of the role they play within the organization, let’s talk a little about what’s happening with people adapting these technologies, being thought leaders in your industries. I just wanted to maybe touch on these points. I don’t know if you know that Tim has a blog? It’s called “Visualize the Plan.” He recently wrote a blog about the willful resistance to adapting new technology as a means to business – what the costs associated with adapting new technologies are, and so I know that you’re still using CPM in other areas and where it fits in, what would you say decision makers are getting wrong about adapting new technologies like Netpoint?
Dan: Merck is very sensitive to IT cost. Making sure that we don’t have redundant systems. If I like particular software versus someone else, you know there’s a strong push to standardize and to minimize the suite of applications that we have. Netpoint aside, we talk about CPM scheduling – in the industry there is two software that are pretty prevalent; one being Microsoft project and the other being Primavera. We as an organization are constantly debating which one should stay and which one should go, licensing costs for them and others, as well as what it takes to get people proficient and what is the proficiency in the company for that particular software. Now Netpoint is a very easy sell to our IT group and anyone who’s ever seen the product. I tell Tim this all the time I see him, that I can’t get through a meeting – if I pull out Netpoint to do a collaborative session, I can’t get 15 minutes into a meeting without somebody saying, “Wow, what’s the name of that software? This is great.”
One of the selling points, we’re in the process of getting Netpoint into our portfolio of applications. Right now we have only several licenses here at Merck because it’s a kind of a drawn-out process to get it into our portfolio of applications. But, as soon as I showed this to our IT architecture folks, and made the case that this is something that the CPM applications that we have doesn’t address, and that there isn’t another software out there that even comes close to it – it was just another one of those meetings that I was five minutes into and I got full buy-in from our architectural folk.
Tim: I was actually talking to one of the directors of IT at Merck the other day about it and he basically was saying, “We want to use it.” – for their project!
Dan: Right. I think what hampers it is just reluctance to just throw out the money to go chasing after the newest, neatest technology. On the other hand, even if it’s the newest, neatest thing – you want to make sure that it’s rolled out properly, that you have folks trained and that the use is optimized for it. Because, right now there is only a couple of licenses in our division so that means that there is only a few people that can actually use the software, and the rest they love the output, they love the process, but we need to be able to get more people proficient in using it.
Tim: And PMA stands ready to help you with that.
Dan: I look forward to it, yes.
Brandies: It sounds like I heard you say a few things, you want to prevent technological hoarding and having multiple pieces of systems kind of hanging around, that aren’t consistent across the board in order to keep costs down, and you also are concerned about investing into new technologies and you really haven’t figured out what the great fit is within the organization, and lastly, getting people educated about how to use a system like Netpoint and other new technologies that might make the business more efficient.
Dan: Exactly.
Brandies: So Tim, hearing some of the challenges that organizations are facing implementing these new technologies, and thinking about your blog, what are people missing? What do they not get about the ease of use and implementing Netpoint and maybe learning it?
Tim: It’s funny. I was just having a conversation yesterday with one of the guys in our development team about that and they said, “Why when people resist adapting Netpoint, why do they resist? What are the forms of objections that people usually raise?” And interestingly it seems to be out of the years of experience I have talking to people about Netpoint – the people who glance at it and say, “You know what, that’s just another scheduling tool” – and they don’t make the distinction, they don’t take the time to make the distinction between GPM and CPM. They don’t really understand the kind of profound implications of the accessibility of the graphics and the intuitive nature of the software itself. When people initially say, “Oh it’s just another scheduling software tool,” and I’ve had many people say this to me – “Well I can do that in primavera. All you’re doing is projecting the schedule. I can do that in Primavera,” And what they fail to grasp is that Netpoint is a real time interactive modeling tool that takes directly your input and changes everything on the screen instantaneously, so if you extend the duration of one activity and it has five activities following it, its going to tell you right away that you’re pushing your date for the end of a project, and it’s going to show it to you in a picture as opposed to some number or having to enter stuff in a database and hit a button and wait for the model to recalculate. All that stuff impedes your ability to make quick decisions and good decisions based on feedback from the system. It may sound a little bit almost arrogant, but I think it’s just that people don’t understand how big a deal Netpoint and GPM are and how different they are as a way of thinking and the way that people interact with the schedule. They just don’t get it.
Brandies: That seems to be the case. I really enjoyed that particular blog because you noted things that have been historically kind of ignored and taken years to adapt versus you know, adapting things that seem to make sense like the x-ray is one of them – and I just couldn’t imagine medical providers not using x-rays in order to quickly diagnose areas of concern. To me Netpoint literally provides the same type of ease of use, it’s an x-ray into what’s happening months, days, weeks, however long the project is down the line. It makes sense. It’s a real value add.
Tim: It’s a huge leap in technology. But unless you’re open to recognizing that, then you don’t see the value in it.
Brandies: Considering we do have the CTO on the call today talking about Netpoint, the software industry is constantly trying to improve the product and make it more adaptive and useful for our clients. Can you give us a little bit of a sneak peak into what is in the queue for Netpoint? Are they in any development? Are you trying to apply in any different kinds of ways?
Tim: Sure. Yeah. Well, there are a few things. There’s a new release that’s going to come out. I have an internal release date now of April first, which I hope that’s not a bad sign being April Fools Day, but…
Dan: And a Sunday.
Tim: … and a Sunday, right. Those developers, they have such a quirky sense of humor! But within the new version of Netpoint, the big change is going to be something that I actually get to name, and we call it GEM which is the graphical edit mode. And in GEM mode, you can switch from planning mode to GEM mode, and within GEM mode you can move all the activities – little attributes, like the description and the date and the float value and the duration – you can just grab them with your mouse or your touch screen and move them around. One of the things about the graphical nature of Netpoint is that you’re really drawing a picture and you’re trying to convey information. The way the picture looks is important and the graphical edit mode will reduce by about 90% the amount of time it takes to perfect a schedule’s look after you’re done building the plan. So, that’s a big advance. Subsequent to the release of what we’re calling 4.1 of Netpoint, right now we’re at 4.0, the next big thing is going to be what we’re calling Netrisk. Netrisk is a probabilistic analysis, a statistical analysis of the schedule – to tell you about schedule duration risk and it uses either a latin hypercube or a Monte Carlo statistical method to take your pessimistic, optimistic, and most likely schedule durations and run a thousand or more scenarios to see were your network will end up if various activities went long or went short. It’s a really well proven statistical way to analyze a project schedule, and we’re actually looking to change the industry’s use of risk. Right now, people typically do a risk assessment period at the start of a project to determine risk, but we’re looking for people to do it on a monthly basis or a weekly basis like a regular cycle of a project, and we think that once you create a schedule at the start of a project, and you say there is a 75% likelihood that we will finish on time given the schedule – that’s a statistical analyses of the schedule, say 75% – then if month later a few thing have changed, you might be able to hold the same date, but maybe your percentage likelihood of ending on time went down to 60%. Well then you know what you wouldn’t otherwise know, which is you’re at risk. Even though your date held, it’s a riskier scenario.
Brandies: Dan, I know that you were talking about trying to roll Netpoint into your suite. Does it sound even more enticing after hearing about all those new enhancements and GEM?
Dan: Well, since I’m doing three risk assessments at the moment, yes. So basically right now we do that very often at Merck and our business, we do periodic risk assessments of the projects. So, this would be a very useful add-on onto the GPM.
Brandies: We’ve actually reached the end of our time here, and I just really want to thank the both of you for so many insights, about how GPM is helping to aid in this industry; the place of CPM and GPM, its not really GPM versus CPM, it’s how do they work well together, and what place; and where do they make an impact?
Just as a few takeaways that I found really interesting from Dan, just thinking about when taking on new technologies onto an organization and its important to figure out how they fit, whether or not it’s cost-effective and whether or not it’s going to make the impact that you’re looking for.
And Tim made some really amazing points about just thinking about things from a broader perspective. Don’t just assume that technologies are just like the other technologies out there; really take the time to investigate. Because you might find a value that you didn’t know was there. GPM is not merely just projecting a plan on the wall; it’s real time. It’s really valuable it seems. People see immediate impact, and I think that this software is really going to be of value add to any organization that adds it in, wouldn’t you say, Dan?
Dan: Absolutely. In these three years I’ve used it on over 20 projects and probably four or five non-traditional uses for scheduling or for any type of software. I think we’re just at the tip of the iceberg from what’s been rolled out now to the capabilities that GPM and Netpoint gives us.