Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The last planner method involves the production of “look‐ahead” schedules for 4–6 weeks in advance. These contain the details of activities and provide an opportunity to explore the detailed dependencies between activities that are frequently not identified at higher levels of planning. This is of benefit in itself. However, the main tool is a micro‐management consideration of weekly schedules. These are prepared from the look‐ahead schedules and contain all the work activities, broken into half‐day units or less. This feature is important – that the work‐unit size is small (around half a day) and consistent between the different activities. These are listed in a table, as demonstrated by the example in table 1 (p. 146). The table shows the preparation of part of a report and presentation by a team with the activities broken down in this way. The following week the team is able to review its progress simply by taking the same table and adding two extra columns – one for whether the activity was complete or not (just a simple yes or no) and, where an activity had not been completed, why this was the case. Table 2 shows the result that the group achieved for this week. Table 2 (p. 147) shows the basic analysis that can be performed weekly, the main measure used being that of planned percent complete (PPC). This is calculated as: In this case 12 of the 18 activities were completed ... log in or subscribe to read full text