Sequence the Work, Staff the Plan

Why design schedules slip

Most design schedules open as a Gantt chart full of dates, bars that say when each task is “supposed” to happen. A row of dates records intention rather than the logic that connects the work. When a design project slips, the cause is almost always that someone was waiting on information that no one sequenced to arrive. The architect could not place the floor plan until mechanical sized the equipment, and mechanical could not size the equipment until the owner chose a system.

Consider a patient moving through a hospital, where the journey is a series of handoffs, from intake to triage to imaging to surgery, and a delay anywhere stalls everything after it. A design project carries the same shape: the project is the patient, the disciplines are the caregivers, and what moves between them is information. Sequencing the handoffs is therefore what produces a schedule that holds.

Design work flows on information, not effort. Sequence the information, and the work follows.

That is Logic-Based Planning: rather than guessing dates forward, a project manager starts from the deliverable and works backward, sequencing the flow of information so every task has what it needs the moment it needs it.

What three plans run at once, and what constrains each?

Every project plan is really three plans at once, and the PM’s job is to keep them in balance. Each one carries a constraint, and good planning focuses effort on releasing the binding constraint while keeping the team moving toward the goal.

Part A built the financial plan (the budget) on top of the task plan (the WBS). This module adds the schedule to the task plan and then lays the resource plan over both. The art is sequencing the work so the binding constraint, usually a piece of information or a single over-booked person, is released before it stalls the team.

How do the five frameworks run from phase to week?

Logic-Based Planning (LBP) ensures design teams work to the logical flow of information between disciplines. It runs in five frameworks, sequenced from the whole phase down to this week’s work, each one keeping the team aligned to the deliverables that matter.

How does planning the work in reverse find the start date?

Pull Planning builds the schedule backward from a milestone rather than forward from a start date. A project manager starts at the end, the deliverable that must be true at, say, the 50 percent progress set, and asks one question over and over: “What is needed immediately before this, in order to deliver it?” Each answer is a handoff: one discipline needs something, and once they get it they provide something to the next, in a stated duration. Those chained handoffs are the critical path of information.

The discipline is to separate deliverables from information, and to phrase every link the same way: “In order for me to provide X, I need Y. Once I have it, I will provide X in N days.” Step back through the Oakhaven 50 percent progress set and watch the chain assemble and the start date reveal itself:

Working backward, the chain reveals that the owner’s mechanical system selection is the true start of this milestone, and since the owner needs a review window, the initiating act is the PM putting three system options in front of the owner about three weeks before the deadline. Forward planning never surfaces that decision, and backward planning puts it first. This is a different decision from the dispatch system selection Module 6 schedules, and an earlier one. The mechanical system selection is decided the week the 50 percent progress set begins and requested three weeks before that, while the dispatch system selection is decided in Week 11 and requested in Week 8.

Which board carries the handoffs, and which carries the week?

The critical path of needs and provides is best drawn as a swim-lane diagram: one lane per discipline, time across the top, and the information handoffs flowing between lanes. It shows who initiates each handoff, who receives it, and when each handoff is due, all on one page.

The swim-lane plan deliberately shows only the shared, critical handoffs, the items with the greatest impact on the whole team. The parallel work inside each discipline lives in a Biweekly Work Plan: each group pulls its own tasks back from its milestone commitments and plans in a rolling two-week look-ahead. Each group drops the finished week, confirms the next, and adds one new week. That rhythm keeps the milestone board clear while every discipline still sees the whole.

How does role demand become real people and a measure of progress?

The schedule tells the team when, and the soft-resource plan from Module 5 tells the team which role. Laying one over the other produces a resource heatmap, a count of how many hours of each role the project needs, week by week. That demand stays abstract until the team moves to hard-schedule it: assign real people, and confirm that the person required is not already booked solid elsewhere.

The work, the hours, and the schedule combine into the one instrument the PM works from every week, the Earned Value Plan. A Gantt of the sequenced work, weighted by each task’s share of the fee, produces a curve of how much of the fee should be earned by each point in time. It is the roadmap that answers, every week, the Module 3 question: is the team earning value as fast as it is spending effort?

Planning as a continuing process

A pull plan, a swim-lane board, and an Earned Value Plan are working documents that the team maintains through the phase. The whole point of Logic-Based Planning is that it stays alive: the team revisits the milestone plan and its biweekly work plans on a regular cadence, adjusting as information arrives and constraints shift. The Accountable Owner owns that rhythm, appointing a keeper of the plan, distributing it, and protecting the review.

Sequence the information, staff the flow, and keep the plan current, and a budget becomes a delivered project. Control Advancement is not a meeting count. It is a sequenced plan, a staffed roster, and a line to read the week against.

With Module 5, planning is complete: the work is broken down, priced, sequenced, and staffed, with a roadmap to measure it against. Next comes Communication Planning, deciding how the team, the consultants, and the client will stay aligned around this plan, and then the kickoff, where both plans are presented to the project team.

Part A wrote for the Team and the Client, because a Work Breakdown Structure and a budget answer what the work is and what it costs. Part B is where the last three readers are finally served. The protected review weeks are what the Reviewer reads. The Earned Value line is what the Firm reads. The week by week labor demand is what the author of the plan reads every Monday to know whether the phase is still on pace.

Remember: a plan is finished only when all five readers can find their own answer in it.