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216 MAINTAINING THE PLAN

In maintaining the plan, the reverse is true. We get 30 percent of the bene-
fit from 70 percent of the effort.
• Plan maintenance is not necessary. We don’t allow changes.

There are some legitimate issues here. Most managers agree that the greatest
benefit to effort ratio is obtained in the planning stage. Frankly, if I had to choose
between limiting the effort to just planning, or not being able to do it at all, I
would certainly go with the limited planning. Otherwise, we may find ourselves
moving swiftly ahead, but on the wrong path.

The first two items also reflect the typical project environment. We do experi-
ence conflict between addressing the project problems and incorporating
changes and status into the plan. And plans do change and workscopes change. It
is a natural part of projects, regardless of the few Neanderthals who refuse to see
this. Dealing with scope and plan changes need not be that difficult or time con-
suming. See Chapter 7.1 for a practical approach to this function.

Trap Failure to maintain the plan or to incorporate changes
and scope modifications will quickly negate the value of the
plan. Perhaps we can think of the plan as a garden. Much ef-
fort goes into planning and planting the shrubs and flowers.
But the failure to perform periodic treatment and trimming
will quickly turn the garden into something even more unat-
tractive than the original void.

Furthermore, as we discuss in Section 8, the failure to main-
tain the plan and a valid baseline makes it difficult to measure
and manage project performance.

Maintaining status and incorporating changes is mostly very easy. The easiest
part is statusing. On a periodic basis, we need only to note when tasks have
started and when they were completed. For tasks in progress, it is customary to
note the percent complete. There are several acceptable methods of doing this. A
detailed discussion of accepted practices for expressing percent complete is pre-
sented in the next section, in Chapter 8.1.

The tricky part is making changes that affect the work flow, such as changing
predecessors and successors. This often occurs when work is performed out of se-
quence. Making such changes is best left to the people who developed the origi-
nal work flow and defined it to the CPM system. But you need to communicate
these changes to them. Remember, there is no law that says that you cannot do