Not sure if your schedule is realistic and would like a credible, useful independent review with specific recommendations for improvement?
The Schedule Confidence Risk Assessment Methodology (SCRAM) is a proven methodology for identifying issues and risks to project and program schedules. SCRAM quantifies the impact of identified schedule risk; focuses risk mitigation efforts, promotes better scheduling practices and is a world-first methodology, with interest from many quarters.
Schedule is almost always the primary concern of project stakeholders and SCRAM is a powerful tool to identify and remediate root causes of project schedule slippage.
SCRAM can be used to:
Determine and quantify schedule risk
Assess and analyse schedule feasibility
Validate tendered schedules in bids
Identify the root cause of project schedule slippage
Ascertain a project’s ‘health’ status and
Focus project risk mitigation effort
SCRAM has been developed over a number of years evolving from reviews of projects in trouble and is used to assist with remediation of major projects of concern or Interest.
There can be multiple causes of schedule slippage which include:
Optimistic, unrealistic estimates
Conflicting views from stakeholders
Evolving or unstable requirements
Poor subcontractor performance
Use of immature technology
Dependencies not realized
Poor monitoring of workloads
Unanticipated rework
Technical debt
Inadequate staffing and lower than expected productivity
Poorly constructed schedules
Root Cause Analysis of Schedule Slippage (RCASS)
Program managers are flooded with information, making it difficult to distinguish between symptoms and root causes of schedule slippage. To declutter and organise the massive amounts of information, SCRAM uses the Root Cause Analysis of Schedule Slippage (RCASS) model to analyse and identify schedule slippage drivers and systematically identifies the fundamental root cause.
A SCRAM Review is typically conducting over two weeks with a written report delivered two weeks later.
The seven key SCRAM Review Principles are:
Minimal Disruption
Independent
Non-advocate
Non-attribution
Corroboration of Evidence
Rapid turn-around
Sharing Results, Openness and Transparency
SCRAM Outputs
Executive Out Brief and Review Report containing
Executive level Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF) statement(s)
- Identifying the most significant issues and risks and their impacts
Detailed findings (issues, risks and impacts)
Monte Carlo Analysis Results
Parametric modeling forecast results
- where applicable
Recommendations
SCRAM can be used:
By organisations to construct a schedule that maximises the likelihood of schedule compliance.
To ensure common risks are addressed before the project schedule is baselined at the commencement of a project.
To monitor project status, performed either ad hoc or to support appropriate milestone reviews
To evaluate challenged projects, to assess the likelihood of schedule compliance, root cause of schedule slippage and recommend remediation of project issues
The audience for SCRAM include:
project managers
project schedulers
hardware and system/software engineers
SCRAM assessment team members
educators and
anyone interested in achieving project schedule
For more information contact us on admin@ipri.org.au
