Dr. Rogers Rule No. 1

Dr. Rogers Rules for Project Management Rule No. 1 If you can't measure it, you can't manage it.

This is a fundamental axiom of my professional life.

Every time I tried to manage something without a concrete measurement system in place, the project became a action of personal sacrifice and agony,and unnecessary personal hard work

A lifetime ago I was called on to manage the architectural and engineering design for a $100M plus high tech manufacturing facility . The first item on my agenda was to build some kind of budget estimate for the engineering. At the time I picked up the project, engineering was working on a reimbursed basis. The client was expecting the engineering and construction to be converted to a lump sum or a guaranteed maximum price. Getting a handle on $5 million of base priced engineering was essential for project success.

I approached the lead piping engineer, who was also the lead engineer for the entire project and asked if he had some measurements for project progress. His answer: we design until we get it right and don't worry about costs, and "by the way you can't measure engineering design output".

I rolled my eyes and moved on asking him what the output of engineering design was for a piping system. Right off the top of his head he said "these are the outputs I check to see if we are meeting the design schedule.:

1. Pipe system calculations.
2. Pipe system sketch (pre-cadd days)
3. Client check and approval
4. Draftsman completes formal drawing
5. Engineer markups drawing
6. Draftsman corrects drawing
7. Design specification draft
8. Design specification review and approval
9. Engineer approved drawings
10. Architectural coordination drawing check.
11. Construction plans ans specifications
12. A couple of meetings.

My response: looks like some measurable outputs, and oh by the way we can add engineer hour budgets to these items and have a cost/schedule plan. Pretty simple.

The engineer completes the system calculation and she earns 8 hours as per the budget for the work.

This particular design engineer became a believer in Rule No.1 over night with just a little coaching.
At another period of my career I had the opportunity to manage a group of artists doing a significant public exhibition project. There was a budget and a schedule.

Again the lead artist, we just work until we are done, run out of paint or run out of time and then you get what you get.

Solution: We measured paint consumption versus a linear map of the installation against the artist labor budget and came in ahead of schedule, under budget and what the artist thought was a superior product.

The fundamental take away for the project manager is:

You get to decide what to measure and how to measure it.

In a future post I will report on Earned Value Management, pros and cons and pitfalls, but that's all for this week.





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