In October 2000 I went for the first time to the US. Together with my then girlfriend, I flew to Las Vegas for a month's trip into Nevada and California. We married in Las Vegas and afterwards hit the road towards Reno, NV.
I had spoken to a lot of people before we took the trip. They told me "you can drive there for hours and don't see anyone". Being from Western Europe I thought "yeah, sure, right". In my area the best you can do is not seeing anyone for 10 minutes in the neighborhood of nuclear waste disposals. So, I hit the road Jack. Rental car, newly wed wife next to me, climate control to the max, Rick James funkin' from the CD-player, driving through Nevada. You know these postcards where you just see a road going straight to the horizon and then disappear, with nothing but nature next to it? That's what I got for two days.
When they mean nothing, they really mean nothing. I had most of the time no idea how far I was, how much time I needed for getting gas, coming to a town bigger then two houses. Just this one road, and once in a very long while you hit upon a landmark (e.g. old mine), and I was able to determine "ok honey, we can go to a bathroom within 2 or 4 hours." The advantage of one road is, you cannot go wrong. No exits, no decisions, no errors.
Driving from Las Vegas to Reno is easy compared to driving from my hometown to a customer I once worked for. It's only 50km distance, but full of turns and twists, detours and uncharted roads on newly built industrial areas. Every 500 meters you have to make a decision.
Driving Miss Project
Project progress is all about driving the project on the road towards its final destination. Where are we and how long do we still have to go? Attached to the answers of these questions are the requirements of the stakeholders towards the process of the project: Are we still within budget? Do we make it on time?
The project progress is an indicator relative to the path from the start to the estimated end, is an indicator where you are on this path, it's always a comparison between two situations, e.g. the start and the end. Project status on the other hand, is a description of a certain moment in time, it's a snapshot of a particular situation. Status is "we spend $300,-", progress is "we spend now 40% of our total budget, and we are on 30% of the total duration".
Feedback all over again
I hope you first read the previous chapter on requirements validation. There the issue was giving feedback on the product requirements. In this section the mantra is "giving feedback on process requirements". And frankly, the experience is that this particular feedback loop is the more appreciated one, it's high profile, if you really succeed in this one, your career is set. So, it's a good way of helping your own stakes.
In this chapter I will talk about schedules and budgets, just simply because it's the way to communicate the feedback on the project progress. I will even go this far in yapping on Gantt, not because "Gantt is project management", but just for the fact that it's an accepted way of communicating; most of the time it's even because some stakeholders do believe "Gantt is project management", and it's always easier to communicate within the expectation of the other party.
But remember, it's feedback time all over again.
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