In recent years, I have closely observed the planning, scheduling, and execution processes in both construction and software projects. The construction industry is striving to move beyond the constraints of Top Down vs. Bottom Up Planning, such as the Critical Path Method (CPM), in order to adopt lean practices and collaborative planning. Meanwhile, the software industry is moving away from the waterfall model and embracing agile development methodologies. The bottom up planning and execution has its benefits and offers flexibility (hence the name agile) and involves people at the coal-face (hence the name Last Planner), there is still an awkward connection when it comes to the reconciliation of top-down and bottom-up planning and execution.
Different countries and cultures tackle this problem in a different way. For example, on projects in Europe, the Master plan schedules are taken as a “guideline” at the field level. However, on Indian projects, we have observed a greater “push” to reconcile the plan with the field and to maintain the task interdependencies and critical path calculations. This creates tremendous pressure on the site teams and planners/coordinators.
However, regardless of the geographic location – all projects “feel the need” to reconcile the top-down and bottom-up plans in order to maintain a healthy control. There are many tools out there that support one approach over the other, i.e. top down or bottom up. However, VisiLean was designed to support both approaches simultaneously, i.e. respecting a top-level Master plan and letting the field teams develop their own lookahead and weekly schedules that seamlessly integrate to provide an always accurate picture of the project. This way the teams can look forward when driving projects rather than watching in the “rearview mirror”.
– DR. BHARGAV DAVE
