New publication: Schedule Adherence

The unknown, unloved and unused p-factor concept

The Earned Schedule technique, initially proposed in 2003 by colleague and friend Walt Lipke has changed the Project Management and Control landscape, leading to numerous publications in professional magazines and academic topflag journals (for an overview, look here) as well as in implementations in software tools such as ProTrack.

Only one year later, in 2004, another concept, known as the p-factor approach, has been proposed that relies on this ES concept. It aims at measuring the effective earned value and at detecting impediments and risks for rework for a project in progress. However, unlike the ES technique, the p-factor still isn't widely used in practice, and little to no articles have been written about it.

That's why we have decided in OR-AS to promote this new concept by not only incorporating it in ProTrack, but also by writing some articles about it. In PM Knowledge Center, three articles on the p-factor have been written, explaining the formula, its use to measure schedule adherence and its ability to identify the lack of this schedule adherence. Interested readers can best start with the article posted here, which guides them through the wonderful PMKC network to the other articles about the p-factor.

But only recently, two new articles have been written. The first one has been published in a book chapter and is copyright protected, so I cannot put it available to our blog readers via this site. You can find the reference by clicking on the book picture "Project Management - Practices, Challenges and Developments" below. In a second article, published in The Measurable News, I have summarized the main findings of the book chapter article in a short overview article, which can be downloaded by clicking on the Measurable News picture below. 

Of course, the p-factor concept has also been described and tested in the books "Measuring Time" and "Dynamic Scheduling" and will also be used in the new upcoming book "Integrated Project Management and Control".

The two new references are:

• Vanhoucke, M., 2013, “Project Management using dynamic scheduling: Baseline scheduling, risk analysis and project control”, The Measurable News, 2, 45-50.
• Vanhoucke, M., 2013, “The impact of project schedule adherence and rework on the duration forecast accuracy of earned value metrics”, in E.C. Hoffmann (Ed.), Project Management: Practices, Challenges and Developments, 95-131.