Assessing Delays in Agile & Distributed Projects

Published in the April edition of PM World Journal,  our latest paper, Assessing Delays in Agile & Distributed Projects looks at the challenge of assessing delay and disruption in projects where a CPM schedule is not being used. 

For the last 50 or more years, the internationally recognized approaches to assessing delay and disruption has been based on the forensic assessment of a CPM schedule. However, the methods detailed in RP 29R-03 Forensic Schedule Analysis and the SCL Delay and Disruption Protocol do not offer a viable option for assessing delay and disruption in a wide range of projects including:
– Projects managed using an agile or iterative approach to development.
– Distributed projects where there is no particular requirement for large parts of the work to be completed in any particular order.
– Projects managed using Lean Construction and similar approaches where the forward planning is iterative and short term.

With Agile becoming mainstream, the number of commercial contracts requiring the delivery of a defined output, within specified time and cost parameters, that use management methodologies that do not support CPM scheduling are increasing. But, the law of contract will not change. If the contractor fails to comply with the contract requirements to deliver the defined scope, within the required time the contractor will be in breach of contact and liable to pay damages to the client for that breach.  A number of IT companies have already been successfully sued for failing to comply with their contractual obligations, the risk is real. 

One way to minimize the contractor’s exposure to damages, is to claim extensions of time to the contract for delay events, particularly delays caused by the client.  What has been missing in the literature to this point in time is a set of processes for calculating the delay in the absence of a viable CPM schedule. The good news is the law was quite capable of sorting out these questions before CPM was invented, what’s missing in the current situation is an approach that can be used to prove a delay in agile or distributed projects.

This paper defines a set of delay assessment methods that will provide a robust and defensible assessment of delay in this class of project where there simply is no viable CPM schedule. The effect of any intervening event is considered in terms of the delay and disruption caused by the loss of resource efficiency, rather than its effect on a predetermined, arbitrary, sequence of activities.

Download Assessing Delays in Agile & Distributed Projects and supporting materials from: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/PMKI-ITC-020.php#ADD