By the end of this chapter you can

• Say what the project module replaces and which work it leaves to other modules.
• Name the fourteen prj_ tables and the eight project types, and place a request, a project and a gate in their statuses.
• Score a request with a weighted model and say who decides it.

What the module does

The module plans and controls improvement, new product introduction, shutdown and capital projects. It takes a request through intake and portfolio scoring, builds a work breakdown structure with all four dependency types and a critical path, measures slip against baselines, tracks resources and timesheets, keeps budgets with commitments and earned value, runs the RAID log, punch lists and commissioning checklists, and produces status reports. The module specification names the tools it replaces: Smartsheet, Asana, monday.com, Microsoft Project, Wrike, ClickUp and Jira for work management, and Oracle Primavera P6 and Procore for capital projects. Roundups of planning software, such as the one the specification cites, list tools of this kind ^[3].

Project management practice is described in the PMI PMBOK Guide (7th edition) and its Practice Standard for Scheduling ^[2], and ISO 21502:2020 gives guidance on project, programme and portfolio management ^[1]. The module does not copy either document. It uses them as the vocabulary a project manager already knows, so that a record means what the manager expects.

Fourteen tables on the shared spine

Every table in the module carries the standard columns every platform table has: id, tenant_id, created_at, created_by, updated_at, updated_by, row_version, archived_at and ext. The module has no people table, site list or calendar of its own: it points at core_person, core_site and core_calendar. Its own tables share the prefix prj_.

The tables below define the three that start the module. Types are written as in the specification: text, int, num (a decimal number), bool, date, ts (a timestamp with time zone), uuid, json and money (stored as integer cents, converted only when shown). An arrow means a foreign key to that table, and req means required. Look at the allowed values before you design anything: they are the database's check constraints, and your agent builds from them in Session 2.

The eleven capabilities

Each capability carries a tier. MVP must exist for a business to cancel its incumbent subscription with confidence. STD is parity with mainstream tools. BIC marks a best-in-class difference. MVP and STD are required for the course; BIC is advanced work, except earned value, which this course requires even though the specification tiers it BIC.

Intake: from a request to an approved project

Work starts as a request (prj_request) with a problem statement, expected benefits, an estimated cost and an estimated benefit. A request is scored on three things: value, risk and strategic fit. The portfolio's scoring_model holds the weights; the request's scores hold the points; total_score is the weighted sum. A portfolio roll-up then shows the whole list ranked, with a capacity check against the people available.

A request moves through submitted, under_review and approved or rejected. An approved request is converted: a prj_project is created and the request keeps its project_id. The project then moves through proposed, approved, planning, executing, closing and closed, and can also be on_hold or cancelled. Its gate (idea, define, plan, execute, close) says which review stage it has passed; status says what is happening now.

In this course the sponsor, the person who pays for the work and decides whether it starts, decides a request that is under review, and cannot decide one they raised themselves. The project manager is named on the project (manager_id) and plans it but does not approve it. Chapter 4 lists every role.

Templates and the eight types

The project type (capex, improvement, kaizen, npi, it, shutdown, customer, regulatory) chooses the template: a kaizen event, a CAPEX project, an NPI project following APQP, a shutdown or an IT project. A template is a ready-made set of tasks, dependencies and gates, so a new project starts from the way the business already does that kind of work.

Exercise · Take stock of your projects and your tool30 minutes

You need: The project or task tool you use today, or a spreadsheet or whiteboard if you have none, and a notebook

Do this with the tool you would replace. Use real projects; a list of ten is enough.

1. 1. List the projects open now, with a project manager and, where there is one, a sponsor for each.
2. 2. Beside each, write one of the eight types (capex, improvement, kaizen, npi, it, shutdown, customer, regulatory) and one stage (proposed, approved, planning, executing, on hold, closing, closed).
3. 3. Find how requests for new work arrive today (email, a form, a meeting) and write who decides them and on what.
4. 4. Write the scoring you use to rank work, if any, or note that there is none.
5. 5. Write what the tool costs a year, from the invoice, and how many people sign in.
6. 6. Pick the project you would move first and write the reason.

Outcome: A one-page inventory: ten projects with type, stage, manager and sponsor, how requests are decided, the yearly cost of the tool and the first project to move.

References

1. ISO 21502:2020, Project, programme and portfolio management: guidance on project management. https://www.iso.org/standard/74947.html
2. PMI: The PMBOK Guide and standards for project management. https://www.pmi.org/standards/pmbok
3. Gitnux: planning project management software. https://gitnux.org/best/planning-project-management-software/

By the end of this chapter you can

• Build a work breakdown structure with summary tasks, tasks, gates and milestones.
• Choose among FS, SS, FF and SF with a lag, and say what each one forces.
• Work the forward and backward pass on a small network and find the float and the critical path.

A work breakdown structure

A work breakdown structure (WBS) divides the project into smaller and smaller pieces until each piece can be assigned, estimated and tracked. In the module it is the table prj_task. Each row has a wbs_code such as 1.2.1, a parent_id that points at the row above it, and a task_type: task (work to do), summary (a heading that rolls up the dates of the tasks below it), milestone (a date with no duration) or gate (a decision point).

The duration counts working days on the project's calendar (calendar_id, pointing at core_calendar), so a task that is five days long does not finish in the middle of a weekend. The work behind it is a different number: effort_hours is the person-hours of work, and a five-day task can take eighty hours if two people work on it full time.

Four dependency types, with lag

A dependency says that task B (the successor) is held back by task A (the predecessor). Finish to start (FS) is the one most tools start with: B cannot start until A finishes. The module also supports start to start (SS), finish to finish (FF) and start to finish (SF) ^[1][2]. A lag adds waiting time: a concrete pour followed by two days of curing is FS with a lag of 2. A negative lag, called a lead in scheduling practice, lets B begin before A ends.

The critical path method

The critical path method (CPM) finds which tasks decide the finish date. It makes two passes through the network, working in whole days from the start. The convention in this chapter is that the project starts at 0 and a task's finish is its start plus its duration.

1. Forward pass. A task's early start (ES) is the latest early finish among its predecessors (0 for the first task). Its early finish (EF) is ES + duration.
2. Backward pass. Start from the project finish. A task's late finish (LF) is the earliest late start among its successors (the project finish for the last task). Its late start (LS) is LF − duration.
3. Total float is LS − ES (the same as LF − EF): how many days the task can slip before the finish date moves.
4. A task with zero float is critical (is_critical), and the chain of critical tasks is the critical path.

The critical path is A, B, D and F: 3 + 4 + 5 + 2 = 14 days. Anything that delays one of them delays the finish by the same amount. C and E can slip by up to four days each before they matter, and C and E together share that four, because they sit on the same chain.

A Gantt chart is one view of this data. The module also gives a board (tasks by status), a list, a calendar and a portfolio timeline of projects. All of them read the same prj_task rows, so a change made in one view appears in the others.

Auto-scheduling and slip

The schedule engine recomputes the dates whenever a duration, a link or a lag changes. This is a test the module must pass: moving a predecessor reschedules its successors and recomputes the critical path, and the CPM results must match a worked network from a textbook such as the PMBOK. The six-task network above is a teaching network of our own, consistent with CPM textbooks, and the course's engine tests use it. When a critical task slips past its baseline, the module publishes the event prj.task.critical_slip so the right people hear about it at once.

Exercise · Work a real network by hand, then move it35 minutes

You need: A spreadsheet or paper, and the project you chose in chapter 1 with the dates your current tool shows

Pick a project with eight to twelve tasks. If your tool shows a critical path, keep that view open to compare.

1. 1. Write each task on its own row with its duration in working days and its predecessors.
2. 2. Mark each link as FS, SS, FF or SF with its lag. Notice how many links your tool lets you set.
3. 3. Do the forward pass: write ES and EF for every task, starting at 0.
4. 4. Do the backward pass from the finish: write LF and LS for every task.
5. 5. Compute total float for each task and mark the tasks with zero float. That is your critical path.
6. 6. Compare it with your tool's critical path. Write down every difference and your best reason for it.
7. 7. Add three days to one critical task and one non-critical task. Redo the passes and write which finish dates moved.

Outcome: A table of ES, EF, LS, LF and float for every task, a critical path agreed or explained against your tool, and a note of what moved when each task slipped.

References

1. PMI: standards, including the Practice Standard for Scheduling. https://www.pmi.org/standards
2. ClickUp: Gantt features compared (dependency types, critical path, baselines). https://clickup.com/learn/topic/project-management/tools/features/gantt-charts/
3. Smartsheet: best Gantt chart software. https://www.smartsheet.com/content/best-gantt-chart-software

By the end of this chapter you can

• Save a baseline and measure start, finish and duration variance against it.
• Show budget, committed, actual and forecast for each cost code, and explain why commitments come from purchase orders.
• Calculate PV, EV, AC, SPI, CPI, EAC and VAC from a small example.

Baselines: the plan you measure against

A baseline is a saved copy of the plan at a moment in time. In the module it is a row in prj_baseline with a name, the moment it was captured (captured_at) and the plan itself in a json column (data). A project can have several baselines: an approved one, and later ones after an approved change. Once saved, a baseline is never edited. A change is a new baseline.

Variance is the current value minus the baseline value: start variance, finish variance and duration variance. A positive finish variance means late. The project row keeps baseline_finish beside finish_date. The module shows the slip and raises an alert when a critical task slips. One KPI follows from it: milestone hit rate, the milestones met on their baseline date divided by the milestones due.

Budget lines, commitments, actuals and forecast

Money is tracked by cost code in prj_budget_line. Each line has a category (equipment, installation, engineering, construction, validation, contingency, internal_labor, software or other) and four amounts: the budget approved, the amount committed (promised to suppliers on approved purchase orders, whether or not it has been invoiced or paid yet, so actual is part of committed, not added to it), the actual spent, and the forecast at completion. All of them are stored as integer cents and converted only when shown.

The rows in prj_commitment come from purchase orders. When the purchasing module (M12) approves a PO, the event inv.po.approved reaches this module, and a commitment is created against a budget line with the vendor, the amount and the date. The po_ref column is a soft link: it names the PO without a database-enforced foreign key, so the module still works when M12 is not installed. The course builds the pull version of the same rule first: in Session 4 a route reads the open PO lines when the manager runs it, and consuming the event as it arrives is the later refinement. The rule to test: the committed amount on a budget line equals the sum of its linked open PO lines.

The KPI for money is budget variance = (forecast − budget) ÷ budget. In the chart above, 765 against 750 is 2.0%. A contingency line is drawn down as risks happen: spend that was not planned is charged to contingency, and the remaining contingency is the cushion for what is still to come. When a business needs to say how firm a number is, AACE International's Recommended Practice 18R-97 classifies cost estimates from Class 5 (least defined, earliest) to Class 1 (most defined) ^[1]. No column holds the class, so record it in the ext column of the budget line (for example ext.estimate_class) when you record the budget.

Earned value

Earned value management (EVM) compares three numbers at one date. Planned value (PV) is the budgeted cost of the work that should be finished by now. Earned value (EV) is the budgeted cost of the work actually finished (percent complete × budget). Actual cost (AC) is what has been spent. The PMBOK Guide explains these measures for general project work ^[2]. The module specification also names ANSI/EIA-748, the guidelines for an earned value management system built on them; read it from its publisher if a contract asks you to follow it.

BAC, the budget at completion, is the total budget. Because money is stored in integer cents, compute the EAC as BAC × AC ÷ EV and round once at the end, not BAC ÷ CPI with a rounded CPI.

Each reading is stored as a row in prj_evm_snapshot with its date (as_of), so the history of SPI and CPI can be charted and an old reading is never recalculated.

Exercise · Put numbers on one project35 minutes

You need: A spreadsheet, one project with a budget, and its purchase orders and invoices to date

Use the project you worked in chapter 2. If you have no purchase orders, use the supplier quotes you accepted.

1. 1. Write three to five cost codes for the project and the budget for each, in the project's currency.
2. 2. For each code, add up the open purchase orders into one committed amount, and the invoices paid into one actual amount.
3. 3. Write a forecast at completion for each code from what is still to be bought or done.
4. 4. Compute budget variance for each code and for the project as (forecast − budget) ÷ budget.
5. 5. Choose a status date. From the schedule, write the planned value, and from each task's percent complete, the earned value. Write the actual cost.
6. 6. Compute SPI, CPI, EAC and VAC.
7. 7. Write one sentence a sponsor could act on: what is the project's position, and what would you do first?

Outcome: A one-page table of budget, committed, actual and forecast by cost code, a budget variance, and SPI, CPI, EAC and VAC with a one-sentence reading.

References

1. AACE International (home page; publisher of Recommended Practice 18R-97, cost estimate classification). https://www.aacei.org/
2. PMI: the PMBOK Guide, including earned value and cost management. https://www.pmi.org/standards/pmbok
3. ClickUp: Gantt features compared (dependency types, critical path, baselines). https://clickup.com/learn/topic/project-management/tools/features/gantt-charts/

By the end of this chapter you can

• Say which role may request, plan, work, approve and read, and why a person never approves their own hours.
• Score a RAID item and follow a punch item and a status report from start to finish.
• Plan the cut-over from the old tool and say how the comparison is made.

Who does what

Access is decided by jobs, not names. Six are people and one is a service role. The rights each one needs are written in the Role and Exposure Matrix in Session 3, and the table shows what each needs to do.

Resources and timesheets

An assignment (prj_assignment) gives a person a task with units_pct, the share of their working time: 50 means half. Planned hours and actual hours sit beside it. Adding a person's units across all the tasks on a day shows their load, and a total above 100 is over-allocation. A capacity heat map shows the same sums across a team and a period.

Hours are logged in prj_time_entry: a person, a project, optionally a task, a work date, hours, a billable flag and a status. A new entry is a draft. The team member submits it. An approver then approves or rejects it, and a rejected entry stays rejected, with the reason, until the team member edits it and submits it again (there is no step back to draft). Hours count only once approved, and the approved hours roll up onto the assignment's actual hours.

RAID: risks, assumptions, issues and decisions

The RAID log is one table, prj_raid_item, with a raid_type of risk, assumption, issue, decision, dependency or change. Each has a title, a description, an owner, a due date, a response and a status of open, monitoring or closed. A risk or an issue also carries a probability and an impact, and the score is their product.

Punch lists and commissioning

A punch item (prj_punch_item) is a small thing found on a walk-down that must be fixed before handover: a missing label, a scratched panel, a loose cover. It names the equipment, has a category (a, b or c), a photo, an owner and a due date. The person fixing it moves it to in_progress and then to ready_to_verify. Someone else checks it and closes it, which publishes prj.punch_item.closed.

For a regulated capital project, the module links commissioning and qualification (C&Q) checklists to the project. The checklists themselves are forms built in M01. The evidence, meaning the completed checklists and the signatures, must be kept with the project record and handed to Document Control when the project closes. ISPE's Baseline Guide Volume 5 and ASTM E2500 describe commissioning and qualification for regulated facilities ^[1][2].

Status reports

A status report (prj_status_report) is written for a period end. It has a health of green, amber or red, a summary, accomplishments, next steps and a risks summary, and an author. The module can draft the summary from the project's data, but a person reads it, edits it and approves it before it is published. Publishing sets published_at, sends the report to stakeholders and publishes prj.status_report.published. In this course a published report never changes: a correction is a new report.

Move the data, run both, retire the old tool

Smartsheet, Asana, monday.com and Microsoft Project can each export tasks with dates and dependencies, as CSV or XML. For how such tools handle links and baselines, see ^[3]. The module imports that file as a new baseline: the old tool's plan is saved, not mixed into the live plan, so the two can be compared. Then run the old and new tools side by side for at least one week and compare task dates, the critical path, the committed amounts and earned value. When they agree, cut over, and cancel the old subscription with the saving recorded.

Exercise · Plan the cut-over30 minutes

You need: Your current tool, with permission to export, and the inventory from chapter 1

Do not cancel anything in this exercise. It prepares the comparison.

1. 1. Find out whether your tool exports tasks with dates and dependencies, and in which format (CSV or XML). Export one small project.
2. 2. Open the export and check that every task has a start, a finish, a duration and a predecessor column. Write what is missing.
3. 3. List the roles from this chapter and write the person who holds each one in your business today.
4. 4. Choose a week to run both tools side by side and the person who will compare them.
5. 5. Write four checks you will make: task dates, the critical path, committed amounts and earned value. Write the difference you would accept for each.
6. 6. Find the renewal date and the yearly cost of the old subscription, and the notice period.

Outcome: An export of one real project, a side-by-side plan with a named person and four checks with accepted differences, and the renewal date and cost of the old tool.

References

1. ISPE (home page; publisher of Baseline Guide Volume 5, Commissioning and Qualification). https://ispe.org/
2. ASTM E2500: Standard Guide for Specification, Design, and Verification of Pharmaceutical and Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing Systems and Equipment. https://store.astm.org/e2500-20.html
3. Smartsheet: best Gantt chart software. https://www.smartsheet.com/content/best-gantt-chart-software

Choose one answer for each question, then submit. You will see the right answer and why for every question.

1. Which project types does prj_project allow?

Acapex, improvement, kaizen, npi, it, shutdown, customer and regulatoryBcapex, opex, maintenance, hiring, marketing and legalCsmall, medium and largeDinternal, external and mixed

2. A portfolio weights value 40, risk 20 and strategic fit 40. A request scores 5 for value, 2 for risk (5 is the lowest risk) and 4 for fit. What is its total_score, as the sum of weight times score divided by the sum of the weights?

A3.7B11.0C4.0D400

3. Which dependency type means the successor cannot finish until the predecessor has started?

AFS, finish to startBSS, start to startCFF, finish to finishDSF, start to finish

4. A task has an early finish of 8 and a late finish of 11. What is its total float in days?

A0B3C8D11

5. Why is a tool that supports only finish-to-start dependencies a pitfall?

AIt cannot show a Gantt chartBIt stores dates in the wrong formatCIt cannot record who owns a taskDOverlapping work has to be faked with extra tasks or lags, so the dates and critical path are wrong

6. A project has no saved baseline. What can nobody do?

AEnter a taskBAssign a person to a taskCMeasure slip, because there are no saved dates to subtract the current dates fromDPrint a status report

7. What should the committed amount on a budget line equal?

AThe sum of its linked open purchase order linesBThe budget amountCThe actual amount spent so farDThe forecast at completion

8. A project has planned value of 250 and earned value of 300 at the status date. What is the SPI?

A0.83B1.50C1.20D0.30

9. BAC is 1,000 and CPI is 0.80. What is the EAC if current cost performance continues?

A800B1,000C1,250D1,800

10. A task assignee has finished fixing a punch item. What status do they set?

Aready_to_verify; a second person checks it and closes itBclosed, because they did the workCopen, so it can be raised againDarchived

11. Risk X has probability 5 and impact 2, risk Y has probability 3 and impact 4, and risk Z has probability 2 and impact 5. Using probability × impact, which one is escalated first?

AX, because it has the highest probabilityBY, with a score of 12CZ, because it has the highest impactDNone; all three score the same

12. After the import, the new module's finish date is two working days later than the old tool's. What do you do before cutting over?

ACut over, because the old tool is probably wrongBOverwrite the imported baseline with the new datesCDelete the tasks that differDExplain the difference or fix the mapping, and cut over only when every difference is explained

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