The utility of planning in large projects

During informal discussions at EM conferences, the subject often comes up that the schedules developed for a particular large project are not used by the execution team. As employee turnover rates increase, the planner´s familiarity with the organization decreases their ability to produce a usable plan. Organizational barriers, outsourcing of tasks, and lack of managerial expertise further aggravate the ability to create useful plans to direct the activities on a project. This paper looks at several large projects to show that the function of the plan as perceived by management was not in line with the views of how the plan was being used in the field. Despite spending millions of dollars in building a schedule, management discovers it is largely ignored outside the planning department once construction starts. People within the organization become skeptical of the planning process and incorrectly view it as a total waste. Benefits of well developed plans are provided even for the cases where they became ignored. Recommendations are provided to help managers understand the reality of planning and to help generate plans that are more likely to be used to direct field work.