One of the biggest challenges project managers face in large enterprise organizations is trying to coordinate what they see happening across their project scheduling, with what’s going on throughout the rest of the organization.
Resources, Costs and Scheduling
A resource gets deployed on a project somewhere, but that cost only surfaces weeks or even months later, when you see it in the monthly or quarterly report. By that stage, you’ve no way of understanding how that resource was used and why your project has ended up going over budget.
That’s because there’s a complete disconnect between project scheduling and the systems you use to track resources and costs.
You need to be able to put a resource against a cost line so you can see in real time where it’s being used, how long it’s needed for and how much that’s going to cost. And to be able to then monitor how the project is progressing, so you can minimize any deviation between planned costs and actual costs.
In other words, you need the software tools you use for resources, costs and scheduling to be able to talk to one another. And to be able to easily import and export data sets without any loss of fidelity, so all your data is consistent and kept up to date.
Production Schedule Vs Project Schedule
In terms of operations, a major pain point is the disconnect between the production schedule and the project schedule.
Your production schedule governs what goes on in practical terms around things like engineering releases, and its goal is to ensure that all the parts and machinery are where they’re supposed to be, when they’re needed. Its focus then is around what happens on the factory floor, with the likes of your Bills of Materials (BoMs) and your integrated customer orders.
Whereas your project schedule is focused on the effect that all that production data has on forecasts, budgets, resource allocation, workforce planning and delivery.
When the production schedule and the project schedule aren’t fully integrated and don’t talk to one another, you inevitably end up with deviation around your costs and delivery dates. Furthermore, you exacerbate one of the cultural challenges organizations face.
Technology Drives Culture
Culturally speaking, engineers and anyone working on the practical side of project production tend not to be too concerned with schedules, they just go ahead and do whatever they’re tasked with.
They follow their own schedule all right, but they manage it separately from the company’s project schedule and probably use a different software system, or even do it offline. But from their perspective, the project is on track.
But the PMO has no idea how things are actually progressing and whether any remedial action is needed. It’s vital for them that they’re in constant conversation with the Control Account Managers (CAMs) and their engineers, and that this communication is done through the project schedule.
But if the software being used is difficult to navigate, or if every time someone uploads data they have to do it multiple times, they’re going to be even less likely to organize their activities through the PMO’s project schedule.
You need a software platform that integrates resources, costs and scheduling, and one that’s effortlessly easy to use. Because that will help you drive and change your organizational culture.
Cora’s Integrated Schedule
All the project data you input into the Cora platform gets integrated into the one, central schedule. You can go into your schedule and plan out the project timeline, allocate resources against individual costs, and associate any risks and issues with specific tasks and milestones.
Everything is visible within the one, integrated schedule view, and everything gets updated dynamically. So all data changes are automatically updated wherever that data set is being used. Giving you immediate visibility, in real time, into where your resources are being allocated and how that impacts your forecasts and budgets.
Furthermore, you can then roll that data up to see a program or portfolio view, to give senior management that all-important 30,000-foot bird’s-eye view of the interdependencies across your portfolio.
Cora’s integrated schedule gives the PMO an overall workbench to control every aspect of a project. You can see precisely where each resource is being used and how much that’s going to cost. And because it’s all being done through the one, integrated schedule, you can track a project’s progress and prevent any unnecessary deviation between planned costs and actual costs.
Which protects your bottom line and improves those all-important margins.