Just today I completed the compulsory Software Project Management course that is worth 4 ECTS. At the completion, I got an important message: a project should not be too bad or too good but should be as planned.

The subject was taught for the whole semester in class telling the students about the definitions and techniques in software project management. Since I also had a compulsory software project management course in my undergraduate study, I found nothing special here except for more systematic explanations (well, the undergraduate course was more into playing group games in the class since the lecturer decided to hold the class in a very informal manner). The class was closed with a written exam whose questions can be found among my lecture notes.

Beside the written exam, the course also had a simulation session using SimulTrain version 6 on E-com scenario. I noted some things from the simulation. First, you can always improve motivation by having private discussions with the employees on the job. For example, when I declined to buy high-end PCs to make my employees more productive, although the coach scorned my decision, motivation could be kept up above 100% by having barbecue or lunch once a week in addition to the private discussion sessions. Second, the budget that I had for not buying high-end PCs could be allocated to make people work overtime. Despite of having frequent overtime and being denied training, the employees' motivation could be kept up high with the aforementioned tricks. If Jeff canceled all overtime because the overtime was above 10%, the overtime could be assigned again with lowered values. This way the project could be finished earlier than planned. Third, you should not decline to buy high-end project management software tool. If you decline it, you will lose your reporting features like the Gantt chart. At the end, the simulation could be completed with CPI 114%, SPI 103%, quality 100% and motivation 118%. But, the trainer judged such a result to be bad. A project should be completed just in time and just in budget with the desired quality. In other words, being able to save up some money or to complete the project earlier is as bas as losing some money or completing the project too late. The given reason is that a change in the project plan upsets people.

The given judgment at first disturbed me very much because I thought it would motivate people to be fraudulent. For example, if I had known about the judgment, I would have spent more money by hiring expensive employees and then filled the timetable with a lot of social activities to make the project come out in time and in budget. But, after more thoughts, I think what the trainer said is correct. For example, if a train is scheduled to arrive at 16.00 and will make a stop for 5 minutes, arriving 10 minutes earlier and making a stop for 5 minutes is as bad as arriving 10 minutes later and making a stop for 5 minutes. If a customer has agreed on the project plan, a CPI much larger than 100% at the end of the project will make the customer question our planning capability. This is as bad as upsetting the customer by a CPI much smaller than 100% at the end of the project.

To conclude, it is true that planning is a very important task in project management: "plan your work and work your plan" as it is written in one of the slides of the lecture material.

The given lecture materials are bundled here: http://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B66kEP2FWgm_Mzg5ZTJkODQtOTVhMi00ZTZlLWEx...
My lecture notes are bundled here: http://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B66kEP2FWgm_NDUyNzUyOGUtNGIxYS00NjE2LWEx...