What is Duration-Driven Project Management?

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Duration-Driven Project Management

In his ground-breaking book, The Mythical Man-Month (1975), Frederick Phillips Brooks identified the importance of duration-based planning to achieve successful projects. He observed that: “Our duration estimations confuse effort with progress; hiding the wrong assumption that men and months are interchangeable”. At PMAlliance we have expanded this observation into three key principles that form the foundation of our Duration-Driven® methodology. Principle 1: Time Matters Almost all projects have deadline dates and if those deadline dates are missed the project will not be a success and along the way budget and quality will most likely be sacrificed. The core of Duration-Driven® methodology is based on the idea that, the time dimension of projects must be managed to achieve success. Principle 2: Duration-Based Estimates In order to manage the time dimension of projects, we must have duration-based estimates from team members; this includes estimates to perform their future activities within a specified duration and estimates to finish their in-progress activities by a specific date. There are decades of anecdotal data demonstrating that obtaining team member commitment is the key to project success. Therefore, we must also have a process that drives team member commitment to the duration-based estimates used in the project plan. Principle 3: Appropriate Tools Many popular project management tools and methodologies can actually impair a team’s ability to create the types of commitments necessary for success. For example, communication of “hours of effort” does not represent a commitment on the part of a team member to complete an activity within a specified amount of time; sophisticated calculations of activity durations by project management software tools do not drive accountability on the part of the team members; and ambiguous estimates of percent complete do not represent a promise on the part of a team member to finish by a certain date. Summary Duration-Driven® Methodology allows project teams to obtain time-based commitments from team members, incorporates those commitments into a dynamic, network-based project plan with a calculated critical path, creates a framework for compressing project durations to meet deadline dates in a way that maintains team member commitment, and then tracks progress over the life of the project and continually reconfirms team member commitment towards meeting the project deadline date. Through Duration-Driven® Methodology, team members operate in a project environment that is more likely to result in success. Want to know more? we have included some case studies you may find useful as well as some general info about our methodology and onboarding process. Please call our toll free number if you would like a faster response. Thank you. P: (866) 808-3735 E: info@pm-alliance.com