EPISOD 5 - THE CONSTELLATION METHOD

CONSTELLATION BY PRIMAFRANCE

The “Constellation Method” developed by PrimaFrance/PrimaConsulting blends into a coherent structure the top-down/bottom-up scheduling techniques and the advantages of the De-centralized Management method. The De-centralized Management Approach where each unit follows the guidelines issued by the corporate and the relevant project procedures ensuring data aggregation and centralized reporting towards the Client and HQ, remains possible.

As will be explained in subsequent paragraphs, the main process of the “Constellation Method” is the delegation. During a delegation, a task from the high level project schedule becomes a project at level of the other unit, where it is further decomposed into smaller elements. This process can be seen as the Top-Bottom scheduling method. The progress sent by the unit in charge of the delivery is incorporated into the master schedule where the data is verified against the original project schedule. This process is the equivalent of the Bottom-Up approach. The Constellation Method allows the project teams to execute the Top-Down/Bottom-Up planning within the same, well defined environment.

Although the idea behind the previously defined method is well known and researched by many schedulers, what makes Constellation different is the mechanism and related software tool build on top of the scheduling engine.

The “Constellation Approach” by PrimaFrance/PrimaConsulting has three major elements:

Procedures: which are based on the corporate management procedures, and dictates the minimum requirements each schedule to fulfill, to allow connection between them and aggregation at the Leading Unit level.

Standard schedule elements: as it was stated before, the Constellation Method is not revolutionary but evolutionary. In order to achieve quick return, only schedule elements are used, as defined in the PMI’s Practice Standard for Scheduling (2007). By doing so, the units will remain within a well known environment, therefore facilitating acceptation and allowing quick utilization. The applied schedule elements are: WBS, Start and Finish Milestones.

Software: all the above allows units in different countries to share schedules by exporting and importing them from and into their systems. However this causes some problems. When the schedule is imported, usually the whole project is imported with all additional attributes, which will create the same structure at the receiver side. Moreover, as the whole schedule is being imported, the receiving unit will have to integrate this “new” schedule into his/her schedule, connect it together and ensure that these two work seamlessly. In case of a complex project, this is an enormous task as the receiver should be able to understand the logic of the other schedule and take the right decisions without having in his/her possession all the information.

On the other hand, the “Constellation Method” contains a software element sitting above the existing scheduling tool used by the unit, and the procedures which simplifies the importation of data.

While the main purpose of the software application is to help the schedulers at the units with as much automation as possible, when Constellation was designed, we made sure that none of the crucial process is being executed without acknowledgement and acceptation from the unit.

Communications between the different units are done via an industry standard messaging system. Each data exchange contains an XML based, encrypted and compressed message. The message format ensures that the files are small and the encryption provides protection of the sensitive data.

Nevertheless of these elements, traditional communication between project team members cannot be and shall not be replaced by tools. It is mandatory that project communication is governed and monitored by processes, and encouraged by the project management team.