Social loafing

Revision as of 20:21, 11 February 2022

Social loafing as discussed by Julian Schmidt / s213004

Abstract

Within project, program and portfolio management, the Milestone Trend Analysis (MTA) can be found under the section Uncertainty. It is a tool for Monitoring that is mainly used for Project Controlling. According to ISO 21502 Project Controlling covers monitoring and measuring performance against an agreed plan of projects, including phases and work packages. This also includes authorized changes. ^{[1] [2]}

The MTA is an effective tool to visualize the milestones within a project. It helps controlling the project by showing which milestone is ahead of, on, or behind schedule. The MTA uses different timelines: the reporting dates and the milestone dates. ^{[2] [3] [4]}

The curves express the projects‘ performance. A horizontal line means that the milestone is on time, an increasing line reflects that the milestone is later than planned and the decreasing line shows that it is earlier than planned. ^[2]

The MTA supports the project managers in that sense that it provides simple trend analysis charts with an overview of bottlenecks, already in the early stages. It also allows a realistic forecast of the progression of the project. [4] It therefore is a combination of history and forecast since it shows time-related discrepancies. It assesses the project’s health by allowing insights into the schedule. This can be seen as one of the MTA’s biggest advantages. ^{[5] [6]}

Those advantages are only applicable when regular reporting dates are set as well as the milestones for the subcategories of the project. Here it is important that those dates are well defined. ^[6]

References

1. ↑ International Organization for Standardization, "ISO 21502:2020 Project, programme and portfolio management — Guidance on project management", 2020
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1 2.2} M. D. Alam and U. F. Gühl, “Project Phases,” in Project-Management in Practice, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2016, pp. 55–121. doi: 10.1007/978-3-662-52944-7_3.
3. ↑ P. Stoemmer, “Milestone Trend Analysis.” https://www.project-management-knowhow.com/milestone_trend_analysis.html (accessed Feb. 10, 2022).
4. ↑ S. Reister, “Milestone Trend Analysis - Free Tool for MS Project.” https://www.theprojectgroup.com/blog/en/milestone-trend-analysis-ms-project/ (accessed Feb. 10, 2022).
5. ↑ M. Waida, “What is a Milestone Trend Analysis?,” Jul. 17, 2020. https://www.wrike.com/blog/what-milestone-trend-analysis/ (accessed Feb. 10, 2022).
6. ↑ ^{6.0 6.1} J. Kuster et al., Project Management Handbook. Springer-Verlag, 2015. [Online]. Available: http://www.springer.com/series/10101