The Impact of GPM on Planning and Scheduling
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.
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Resisting the Adoption of New Technologies
True innovation is so unexpected that the mind often reacts by summarily rejecting the innovation. Take for example the hundreds of thousands of cartoons from the early 1900’s mocking all things automotive.
INSULT ADDED TO INJURY.—Wretched Boy. “Hi, guv’nor! D’yer want any help?”
The virulence with which the general public and the media rejected automobiles is only matched by the ubiquity with which the automobile later entered American culture.
I recently read a fascinating book about Garfield; no, not the lasagna loving, Monday hating cartoon character, but the assassinated 20th President of the United States. The book, was entitled “Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President,” But my alternate title is “How Willful Ignorance and Failure to Adopt New Technologies Killed the President.”
President James A. Garfield was an amazing man. He was part of a pioneer family in Ohio, homesteading, clearing the land, under attack by Indians. His father died when he was only 17 months old and the family had to sell off much of the land to pay debts. His Mom and older brother worked the farm and sent James to school. James ran off to work the river boats. Eventually found his way back to school and did so well in his freshman year that in his sophomore year he was made a faculty member, and by age 26 he was President of the University. He was a loving father and husband, a trusted friend, and a great leader.
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CIO Corner: Obstacles to Innovation in Business and Technology
Gunnar Branson: I’m glad you’re able to tune in to CIO Corner; we’re having a conversation today with a couple of preeminent CIOs about some of the principles for success in IT, in innovation technology, and looking at some of the guiding principles that are helping CIOs really make a difference in their businesses and their organizations. I’m Gunnar Branson| 
. I’m the CEO of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Managers, and I’ve been a consultant in the innovation space for about 10 years.
With me is Dave Patzwald| , who’s the CEO of Coach America; we also have Tim Mather| , the Chief Technical Officer of PMA Consultants, along with Brandies Dunagan| , who’s the social media specialist at i.c.stars and Ronald Coleman| , a resident at i.c.stars. So now that we’ve done a quick introduction, we can actually start talking and get listening from someone else other than me. But at this point what I wanted to start with is talking a little bit about innovation and about the disconnect between innovation in terms of inventing things or coming up with new technology and actually getting an organization and getting an industry to embrace a new way of doing things.
Gunnar Branson: So we all talk about it. Many companies have Chief Innovation Officers, not to be confused with Chief Information Officers, and those of us that are working in IT are usually tasked with making innovation happen. But more often than not, nothing does. Or we do a lot of work and it doesn’t get incorporated. So I think the question here, more than what is it that people can do to do a better job of innovation, I’d like to flip that question a little bit with all of us and try to think about or talk about the question of what is it that leaders and organizations do wrong with innovation, how do they get tripped up and why is it that innovation doesn’t happen? I wanted to start maybe with our two CIOs Dave and Tim—when you think about innovation, what do you think leaders are doing wrong? Tim, do you want to take this first?
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IT’S A CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUE
The First Amendment enshrines every American’s right to the freedom of expression. Our goal is to elevate and facilitate the exercise of that right in project planning.
“Chase after truth like hell and you’ll free yourself, even though you never touch its coattails,” said Clarence Darrow, US defense lawyer (1857 – 1938).
Sticky notes on a wall for the collaborative generation of the schedule framework (the planning phase) is suboptimal. The first step of sticky notes on a printed time scale is limiting in and of itself. Transferring the information from sticky notes to CPM software (the scheduling phase) creates a further dissipation of the group consensus. Not only is the sticky note process two steps, but the second step is rarely accomplished in a collaborative fashion. Consequently, many of the benefits of a fully collaborative session are not realized.
Until very recently, the two-step process was unavoidable. With NetPoint we are able to accomplish a virtual, real-time, full-wall planning session, utilizing the Graphical Planning Method® (GPM). GPM is a graphical, interactive, real-time planning method anchored on object-oriented principles and network based math rules. We can quickly create a visual model of our plan and then manipulate the model to explore alternative delivery modalities.
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Time scaled planning 1950s to present
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.
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Synchronizing time over space
So as of 1905: time is relative and slows as the speed of light is approached. Calendars are a graphical representation of the passage of time based on the motion of the planets, segmenting time into days, weeks, months, and years. We now enter an age when for the first time in history precision in how we keep time becomes critical. With the advent of train travel over longer distances it became important for clocks in various cities to strike the hour at the same time. Also, if you are trying to coordinate the sharing of a single track between multiple trains, prior to the invention of radio communication, synchronized time is a matter of life and death.
As industrialization and urbanization accelerated in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s the standardization and synchronization of time over distance became an important challenge to engineers. The French genius Henri Poincare was a driving force in this area. The first attempts at synchronizing clocks in a large urban area occurred in Paris using pressurized steam to pneumatically blast clocks all over the city into some semblance of synchronicity. An elaborate system of tunnels and steam pipes was developed throughout the City. Later, as the telegraph expanded its reach, the much higher speed of an electrical signal was used to synchronize clocks over large areas.
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Introduction of the Julian calendar and the Gregorian correction
In 45 BC, Julius Caesar inaugurated the basic calendar we use today. However, his calendar was flawed in that it did not align precisely with the rotation of the planets. Over many years, this creates a misalignment between human seasonal celebrations and the weather. For instance, after many years of being off by a day or so, a misaligned calendar might cause a fall harvest celebration to be scheduled for the middle of the summer. Nearly 1,500 years after its debut, the Julian calendar required a 10 day correction.
Around 1,000 A.D. Ptolemy observed in a published article that the Julian calendar was off, but at this time and for hundreds of years to come, it was potentially life-threatening to question the validity of the calendar. In the 13th century, the western world’s view of the universe was dictated by the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church did not recognize that the earth circled the sun, and in order to work out a truly precise calendar, this bit of dogma would have to adjust to match reality. So it should be no surprise that in the 1300’s it was the outcaste, curmudgeonly, genius, monk with superhuman intellectual abilities and independence, Roger Bacon, in league with Pope Clement IV, who died too young, set the stage for the Gregorian correction of the 1500s. While history does not record the reasons behind Clement the IV’s interest in calendar reform it was his interest and advocacy which propelled Roger Bacon to document the failings of the Julian calendar. Shortly after Bacon’s work reached the Pope, the Pope died, leaving Bacon behind with plenty of knowledge but no power to do anything about it.
It is also important to our overall understanding of the evolution of calendars through history to bear in mind that the telescope was not invented until the 1600’s. It was the telescope and minds like Galileo and Copernicus that literally reoriented the universe. This reorientation of the universe leads to a better understanding of the motion of the planets and the place of the earth in the solar system.
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Humanity’s Historical Struggle to Grasp Time
In the developed world our lives are driven every day by calendars and clocks: What time is my flight, what day should we meet, how late can you work? In the world of scheduling and time-scaled planning, start dates, end dates, and durations is the order of the day. As far as we know we are the only creatures on earth who have a concept of passing time. But how many of us have stopped to consider where time and dates come from? Who invented the calendar? Is time really relative? Time does not seem especially relative on the critical path of a networked schedule!
A retrospective look at the humanity’s quest to understand dates and times may offer the reader a new perspective on the planning process and a broader understanding of the actual underpinnings of that thing we call a time-scaled plan.
“The calendar is intolerable to all wisdom, the horror of all astronomy, and a laughing-stock from a mathematician’s point of view” – Roger Bacon, 1267
Why was a Roman Catholic Monk raging against calendars in the mid 13th century? One might imagine an orderly, synchronized system of straight forward, almost mechanical precision, lurking just below the methodical appearance of calendars and clocks. However, as Holden Caulfield famously declared of his roommate, Stradlater, in Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye”: time is a secret slob. Oh sure it looks all put together on the surface, but just peel back the top layer and one will find a messy contrivance worthy of Rube Goldberg!
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