Understanding the Rolling Wave Planning

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the concept of Rolling Wave Planning, which deals with the progressive elaboration of the project scope. He presents the pros and cons of this technique, giving answers to questions such as: "How do I get the detail work that will happen in the 2nd week of the 14th month in my project?"

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Episode transcript

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Hello, everyone. Welcome to the five minutes BM podcast today. I like to talk to you about the rolling Wave Planning there's a lot of concepts and misunderstanding about, of what is the holding Wave Planning and how this process works. So the first thing its the whole way of planning is based on the phone, a concept of progressive elaboration, it means that you don't have the full information of the whole project. Let's suppose a longterm project two years, three years.

So you know, more in the tails, what you need to do maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe this month, but you don't know exactly what you will be doing in five months from now. So you need to understand that it's like the waves in the ocean, the waves that are coming close to the beach, you can see them better. You can understand, you can capture more details, but if you look the waves that are three, four, five miles away, you just don't know what is going on there.

You don't know if it's a big wave or as more Wave you, you don't have this. That they'll be because it's far away. Unless you have an very special glass that could brings you the power of seeing does this sense? You will not be able. So what is the concept behind holding Wave Planning is that you need to split your project into phases, into groups and the groups that are very close to you in time, you detail more and the groups that are in the middle, you detail a little bit less in the groups that are far away, your detail, much less.

And with all the time moving, you start the tailoring more, this species of work. So it's a time sequence. So you have more certainty about what's going on next week, but you or not so sure about what will happen in for five months. So this is the basic concept. So for example, what we call high density inside the tail may be the next three months. If you think medium density between three months and 12 months in low density, more than a year, because there's a such a big variety of events that could happen when you're from now that you cannot predict because future is not predictable.

We can control some aspects, but we cannot control everything. So it's very important. So this Wave concept. It's a way of building a progressive way, what you need to do an hour. So we need to understand one main aspect of this concept. Progressive elaboration is the risk introduce Rolling Wave introduces risk. Never forget this. Y because imagine that big package you left for next year, of course you need to put a price tag on it.

You need to put some time to do it. So you guess, okay. I think $1 million is enough to do that. And I think I can do this in four months. Then when you open that box, Oh, you see a very deep front animal inside and then you need to say, OK, 1 million, there is not enough. Or maybe I need 10. So it's very important to understand that when you open, you can be a victim of the scope creep. So along the way, the risk changes.

So you need to understand and accept this. So the Rolling Wave is very good. Very nice for you to plan. It's a very comforting, but wait. Okay. I don't know the future. So we don't plan the future projects, but you need to accept that a risk can occur when you start detailing this box, as you don't know yet, because the future comes with uncertainty, but if you cannot tolerate this level of risk. So let me give you an example in capital projects, very large, very big capital invested.

For example, when you use the foul process, what do you do? You need may be on fell too. You need to get so much on fell for you need to do all the engineering, everything you need to think about every small detail. And sometimes you spend a huge amount of money to open that box that will come three years ahead. And why you need to do that because you cannot accept live in something that it's not the final. Say why you cannot accept because maybe when you open that box, you see a price tag off a billion dollar, their, that you cannot tolerate.

So you spend more money. So it's a matter of cost benefit. It depends on how much you can tolerate weight for having more definitions in the future. So if you can do that, you can use the priests to the concept of stage Planning on brings too. You can use most of this crank concept and they're a giant concept and the rolling Wave, but if you cannot, then you need to invest a huge amount of money to plan, to see all possible scenarios and everything.

Even doing that because future is something that is unpredictable. You cannot open in this still fine, something that you cannot plan that you cannot forecast. So think about that. Rolling wave planning, something that I use a lot. I like it very, very much, but of course you need to be prepared to take the risk of when you open that book in the future. You'll don't get a very big surprise. I hope you enjoy this podcast. See you next week with another five minutes before a Podcast.

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