Measuring the Physical Progress of the Project

How to measure how far you are to finish a task where creativity is relevant and inspiration can accelerate or decelerate the progress? In this podcast, Ricardo talks about how we can best measure the real physical progress of the project and explains the application of the concept of anchoring and the WBS decomposition.

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Episode transcript

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Hello everybody welcome to the five minutes PM. I guess today, I like to talk about the physical Progress. One of the biggest challenges that the project manager has is when he or she has a plan and it is acute in discipline, they need to say, okay, this is our progress. Our Physical Progress is it 10%, 15, 20, 25? And we can divide this in two kind of work. One is the measurable work in the order.

One is the no measurable work, the measurable at work. It's quite simple because you have a scale where you can measure easily. Let me give you an example. Let's suppose that your task is to take some breaks and make a wall. And let's suppose that to make the wall, you need to pile up 10 bricks and you already put three off that. So it's quite reasonable to say, okay, I have 30% off that task ready? Because three out of 10, what simple.

So when you have square feet, cubic feet, square meters, whatever. So you can earn or this into a very clear unit of measurement. Do you know, we have a group, the gnome measurable. This is where most of the challenges real life, because most of the people, the poor Progress based it on our own feelings so that they say, Oh, it's 90%. Each 20 soul. There is a very and personal judgemental on doing that.

So the way of solving this, it's basically again, in two ways of working an address in this, the first one is anchoring. When you create an enter to tie your know measurable work, do something measurable. So let me give you some examples. The first one is when you have, for example, learning a new one to attach, learning with work experience with time on the work.

So I can say, okay, someone with two years of experience has twice the knowledge of someone with one year of experience. It's quite polemic, right? It's quite polemic because you were doing a simplification of the reality. So in this example, I use it exactly to challenge you. Because many times we are doing something like that. We are entering some intangible with something tangible. So let me give you a couple of examples.

First one, you, a driver's license, your driver's license is a tangible way of showing that you know how to drive. And I imagine that everybody with a driver's license is able to drive equally, like in reality, does, this is not true. We have outstanding drivers and we have drivers that only that task on that 20 minutes. Good. The second one, can you have a proof of marriage? Most of the people measured this ES a proof of love what's that necessary does not means the same.

So you need just one, understand that when you create an anchor, when you translate something that is not measurable into something that is measurable, you make a lot of progress. But do you need to understand that this is a very strong simplification of the reality, but many times you don't have order option. You don't have other option, but the linkage, let me give you a project management example, the project management costs and Progress most of the people put on the WBS one day he barks like called project management, the project management, it's an intangible work because a project management work we'll be perceived through the tasks.

So what do you do? You ensure the progress of this project management tasks to the project of the related activities? So if the project, the Physical project is 25%, you can assume that, okay, 20% of the work in project management is done. So this is a way of life anchoring and no measurable work. Two a measurable, the other way is to increase. The level of detail is to increase the capillarity off your WBS. So you create smaller work packages let's suppose that you are creating a music.

OK. It's a quite and tangible because you can not think about it. All the music Basie in line. One of the poem that you were writing, because it's very tough, but do you can do something like that? You can say, okay, when I have the music, I will consider that I have 20% ready when I have the company. I have another 20%. When I put the two together, I can have a moderate 20% when that created the Phonogram. I have an audit 20% in when the musical producer or the producer approves.

And some key people are prove that I have a hundred percent it's better than just having a foggy. Project a completely foggy. So this is the way we need to think about progress, that we need to think about how we can evolve it in the Physical progress of our projects. So I hope you enjoy this Podcast next week. We'll continue discussing it. In other aspects of the project management work. See you.

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