Adoption of Microsoft Project in IT Versus Construction: Different Animals, Same Cage?
The application of Microsoft Project as a scheduling tool within the construction industry is limited, although it is growing. Historically, Primavera (now Oracle Primavera) has dominated the construction scheduling industry, while Microsoft Project has gained much greater acceptance in the IT and Product Development marketplace.
I wonder about the difference in adoption rates between these two dominant software tools for project controls and scheduling. I was told by a senior Microsoft Executive that MS Project is a billion-dollar-a-year business for Microsoft, with over 40,000,000 copies in circulation. I also wonder what percentage of these licenses are accessed on a regular basis, and about the underlying quality of schedules developed using MS Project.
In both IT and construction, there’s a body of knowledge describing the proper methods to use when planning a project and creating a schedule. However, while it is common practice in the construction industry to create a detailed baseline critical path schedule, it is not common practice in IT. In all of my interviews, I found the application of critical path scheduling to be minimal in IT projects and ubiquitous in construction projects. Scheduling seems to be one of the areas of project controls which differs greatly between the two industries, which begs a deeper analysis. Why is a tool which is considered essential in planning and reporting progress on construction projects virtually unused in managing IT projects?
Why I’m Dumping my iPhone 5 for the Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy Gear
I’ve had an iPhone since the first one came out. I’ve said for years that the iPhone would be the one tech device I would keep if I could only keep one. Apple definitely raised the bar on smart phones with the first iPhone. But, they have not kept up the pace and Samsung has overtaken the iPhone in terms of functionality and value.
|
Feature |
iPhone 5 |
|
|
Device in General |
||
|
Battery Life |
Great |
Poor and unpredictable |
|
Screen Size |
Great (baby boomer…) |
Small for my old eyes |
|
App Stability |
Great |
Really poor |
|
Expandable Memory |
Unlimited |
No |
|
UI |
good |
Good |
|
Device Reliability |
Great |
Poor and unpredictable |
|
Platform Reach |
Wide |
Narrow |
|
Amazon Integration |
Great |
What? |
|
Google Integration |
Great |
What? |
|
Music |
Good |
Good |
|
Voice Command Integration |
Great |
Good |
|
Samsung Gear (wrist watch) |
||
|
Answer Calls and talk |
Yes |
Na |
|
Know when you walk away from your phone |
Yes |
Na |
|
Receive and respond to text messages |
Yes |
Na |
|
Get alerts from Facebook |
Yes |
Na |
|
Get alerts from twitter |
Yes |
Na |
|
Fitness integration |
Yes |
Na |
|
Integrated Camera |
Yes |
Na |
|
Integrated Voice Memo |
Yes |
Na |
|
Specific Apps I use |
||
|
Google Music v iTunes |
Good |
Good |
|
NPR |
Great |
Unreliable |
|
MapMyRun |
Great |
Unreliable |
|
Kindle Reader |
Great |
What? Can’t see it… |
|
Kindle Audio Books |
Great |
Available |
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The biggest issue for most iPhone users switching to Android / Samsung will be losing iTunes. I thought this would be a big problem but it turned out not to be. One of the great features of the Galaxy is the mini SD slot. I bought a 64 Gig mini SD card from Amazon Prime (on my note 3 browser) and got it the next day for $50. I copied by iTunes library onto the SD card, plugged it into the Samsung and opened up my Google Play Music App, it saw the music right away.
I also love the Android swype keyboard. It is so fast and intuitive. I still need to figure out how to spell words with two letters in a row. Although the voice recognition is great as well, come acoustic surroundings preclude the effective use of voice recognition.
A Comprehensive Standard in Project Planning – Theory of Constraints
Project planning presents the first opportunity to identify and address bottlenecks and constraints. We have to be a little careful in using the term “constraints” in the construction and planning industry, because this is also a term of art in the world of scheduling. When creating a schedule, the scheduler or planner can set a time constraint on an activity. For instance, a SNE constraint requires that an activity can “Start No Earlier” than the date specified by the scheduler. Because of the algorithmic limitations of CPM, constraints must be used to hold a date later than the calculated early start date. While each of these constraints should be considered in light of a TOC project evaluation, they are only one small aspect of the application of TOC in construction projects.
Goldratt’s theory is comprehensive – it holds the overall project to a higher standard. In TOC, the ultimate measure of system effectiveness is throughput. What is throughput? It depends on the organization’s goals. For a manufacturing company, throughput is how efficiently product has been designed, produced, and sold and paid for, and at what cost. For a professional services firm, the equation is a little different, because in the world of professional services, the work cannot be produced and sold, but the consultants are inventory (a very costly asset when not productive, or, more cruelly, meat with an expiration date at the butcher counter).
Eliyahu M. Golratt – Theory of Constraints [TOC] Leads to a Revolution in Manufacturing
I’m a big fan of Eliyahu M. Goldratt, especially his Theory of Constraints (TOC) and his work on bottleneck management. Goldratt revolutionized the manufacturing world with a critical insight into the overall operation of the plant floor. Before Goldratt, local efficiency was the key metric used to measure performance on the shop floor.
Imagine that a factory had 10 workstations, each with a specific job in the manufacturing process. At one time, management believed that if each machine was running close to 100 percent of the time then the factory would be as efficient as possible. However, Goldratt figured out that the factory as a whole could only run as fast as its slowest machine. By running machines at disparate production rates to full capacity, the manufacturer was, in fact, just creating work in process (WIP) and jamming up the factory shop floor.
Do P6 Primavera Schedules Make You Want To Cry? You Are Not Alone.
To be an artist means never to avert one’s eyes.
To be a consumer of P6 Primavera schedules means a nearly constant urge to avert one’s eyes.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but the graphic produced by P6 is a schedule diagram only a mother could love. How did this come to be? Well, we have to start with the architectural basis on which the P6 diagram is built. All CPM systems have three engines: database, scheduling and display. Because of the algorithms that drive CPM, each change in the database requires a complete forward and backward pass of the database through the scheduling engine. Then a new set of early start dates is generated and redrawn.
Because the database is a column-and-row sort of affair, the user is unable to control the path of logic ties between activities. What results is a spaghetti dinner of logic ties presented in such a way that it is nearly impossible to follow which activity is driving which through the schedule. The graphical representation of the schedule could use some improvement, but mechanically, CPM is not up to the task.
Using Time-Scaled Virtual Reality to Visualize and Reduce Risk in Construction
Wouldn’t it be great if you could see how a building will come together day by day, based on all of your drawings and your schedule – to really visualize the plan? That might make a good blog url…
4D BIM can accomplish this, to a certain extent. If you ask most practitioners what the benefits of BIM and 4D BIM might be, they will respond with clash detection, more accurate cost information, and facilities management. These are the classic benefits of 3D BIM; the actual level of benefit derived from the implementation of 3D BIM has been quite variable.
But if the model is built correctly, you can see the risks in construction before the first piling is driven. For instance, you can see that your plan calls for two cranes to be in the same place at the same time, or that your plan calls for material to enter the jobsite through an opening that’s actually too small for the material.
Using Visualization to Reduce Risk
When I worked for IBM, I had the pleasure of working with some of the smartest, most reliable people in the world. At the top of that list was a visionary leader named Jim Hile. Jim has a unique gift for seeing opportunities, and he is fearless in doing the work required to seize the day.
After his retirement from IBM, Jim invested in a struggling technology company in the virtual reality space (VR). Through his tireless work, great leadership and a healthy dose of capital, the firm was turned around and sold. Jim saw the opportunity and seized it.
While Jim was running the firm, I got a tour, and a demonstration of how virtual reality systems work. For those not familiar with VR, the most advanced systems are room-sized 3D immersion systems. You can create any environment or simulated physical reality that you want. For those of you familiar with Star Trek, this is the closest we have come, so far, to a “holodeck.”
Visualizing Schedule Risk In Your Mind’s Eye: You See Trouble Ahead
An Idiomatic and Sensory Investigation of Interactive Visual Risk Assessments
What do we mean when we say “I see trouble ahead?” Notice that we don’t say, “I’ve reviewed a tabular report and I prognosticate problems,” or, “I touched the report you sent, and I feel trouble on the way.” Sometimes people say they can smell trouble, or smell trouble brewing, but most often it is seeing it on a wall, in a diagram, or in our minds eye that enables clear cognition of impending calamity. It’s fair to say that visualization is a key factor in recognizing risk in general.
When it comes to schedule risk, until recently, visualization options have been limited, and disconnected from the actual schedule. Until the development of the Graphical Path Method (GPM) and NetRisk, there was no way to see a schedule on a timescale and interactively visualize the impact of a particular risk on the schedule.
Most conventional schedule risk tools work by importing information from an outside scheduling tool such as Oracle Primavera Risk Analyzer or Acumen Risk. Once the data is imported, it gets massaged further, ranged and iterated to generate a series of graphs and tabular reports. Experts then interpret these reports and recommend mitigating measures to apply to the schedule.
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