Giacomo Carli

Giacomo Carli

Giacomo is a Senior Lecturer in Strategic Management at The Open University Business School. He holds a work experience in project management both in consulting companies and in EU research projects.

Location Open University Business School, Milton Keynes, UK

Activity

  • Joe, you got the point! Thank you for sharing your thoughts

  • It would be more complicated to do the calculations by hand. That's why Goldratt provides the software.

  • Hello,
    i try to be of help. the reduction of the maximum duration is due to statistical reasons. If you go back at the step before, the assumption made by Goldratt is that activities are planned considering Point C in the diagram. That is the longest possible time which accounts for many risks. In reality, activities take less time (if they start at the due...

  • Hi Leo,
    according to Goldratt, actually costs are not impacted. This is because most of the time planned in the duration of an activity is not active work, but just time to protect from risk. If you look at the previous step, you can see that the activity will end at around point B in most of the cases.

  • Hi Dawn,
    the main idea of Goldratt is that activities are schedule accounting for all the risks, as represented in Point C of the previous step. This means that in many case people would finish them earlier, which is around point B in the previous step, which is just about half of the duration of point C. I hope this helped. Let me know.

  • Does it work for you now?

  • Let me try to help: the figures shows the probability of finishing the same task. Most of the cases are around point B, but typically we schedule using point C, increasing task duration to avoid risks.This makes project longer than needed according to Goldratt.

  • You make me proud of you! thanks for your comments.

  • Hi Christine, the diagrams show ideal situations, to explain the concepts based on the assumption that workers are all the same. This might not be always the case in reality. I hope this helps.
    Cheers :-)

  • Hi Amit, in this course we do not make use of specific techniques, to make it relevant for different projects, including simple ones. FMEA is for sure very useful in several areas

  • Dear Learners
    Welcome to Week 3!
    Now it is time to move to the implementation phase of the projects we carefully planned for the last 2 weeks.
    You will see in this week how the work of a project manager changes.
    I wish you a pleasant journey across these topics.
    best regards
    Giacomo

  • Hi Gaenor, I appreciate your feedback, and I will take it into account. In this MOOC there is a variety of methods and tools, which targets different aspects of projects. The CPM is shown because it is common to include it in a beginner course and is part of several professional certifications in project management.
    The mentors are constantly monitoring the...

  • Hi Rissa
    you have an ambitious plan. I wish you all the best

  • Hi and welcome to Week 2 of our course,
    You will dig into the project planning phase. Probably, you will find this week quite intensive, but the investment will repay you in the rest of the course and, I hope, in your life.
    Enjoy the week
    kind regards
    Giacomo

  • Thanks: updated!

  • Dear Learners,
    As you now from the video, I am the Lead Educator of this course in Project Management.
    We are in the middle of week 1 and I am so proud to see so many people of different countries joined this course.
    I hope you will find our journey into Project Management both interesting and useful for your personal and work life. I made my best to...

  • if you use a software like Microsoft Project, it can move from month to weeks and days very quickly, adjusting the scale of the calendar. The scale depends on the duration of the project. But, at a certain point you need to assign tasks to people and you should consider days and weeks as the right timeframe.
    There is a more complicated way of estimation...

  • You just need to show the results, in many cases. And an appendix for the calculations

  • The matrix is the last step of the analysis to communicate your results

  • that is the right approach

  • Hi , Thank you for noting a typo: activity has a LF date of 11. It does not affect the quiz, but I will correct it. The other dates are correct.

  • Are you sure of these calculations? check the other comments to see the right answers

  • You can download the template from the bottom of the page

  • You can access it whenever you need, as long as you remain registered on Future Learn

  • Thank you for your active participation

  • Thanks

  • Thanks to you Patrick and to All the Learners who made this mooc participated and enjoyable

  • It could be a good idea to celebrate as it were a gratuation

  • You can use your learning for a formal course at the OU: see the nest step https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/project-management/1/steps/100870

  • Thank you for sharing the calculations...

  • There are much more maths and more advanced techniques. You could enjoy also the MOOCs in finance from the Open University.

  • Thanks for sharing this experience.

  • activity 4 is happening just after activity 3. It is a very linear simple project

  • I love to work at night... and look at comments on these steps in late hours.

  • Thank you! I have become addicted

  • It depends on the project and the stakeholders...

  • If you want to use the same template of the example, you find it at the bottom of the page

  • Besides the CPM it is the second numerical part... You do not need to remember, just try to grasp the meaning of the variables and the use of the template. You can always look at these pages for the definitions

  • I agree with your choice Pamela

  • Typically they are provided with the matrix, and some brief explanation

  • the names of the variables are not easy, but I suggest to try to grasp their meaning

  • I agree: the example is just introductory, but it is the foundation to build something more advanced.

  • The earned value means the value of budget you converted into real achievement

  • Very good question: it is not easy to know how much has been done so far. You need to evaluate and use your judgement. There are also techniques used in in these evaluations. They are called 50-50 and 0-100 methods. A bit more adavanced for this introductory course

  • You can also look at the template at the bottom of the page

  • the word return is not intended as 'profit' here, but as transformation into a result

  • Unfortunately there is not printable material, but you can continue to access whenever you need

  • There is much more to know about project management, but it would have been an advanced course as the ones we teach in our master or executive programmes

  • it is delivered to you for a small charge...

  • let me pass this to our helpdesk

  • I can give you some other assignments...
    Thanks for your comments

  • Thank you! I could not do it better

  • it is at the bottom of the page

  • Thank you. There is still much to know on earned value but what you find here is a good starting point

  • Hi Diane
    You raise two good points.
    How do collect the actual costs? You can know them only when you account for them (the sooner is the better, even before the payment).
    Why do we use a cost measure to depict a time variance? Because we want to make it comparable to the cost variance, so we measure time in terms of budget not spent yet. Otherwise it would...

  • This is still a very debated topic in research. There is not a single view on how to make a team focused and effective. Many theories have been proposed, and none is fully convincing. Moreover, in team working online, everything sound different. What is your personal experience?

  • Hi Debbie, the 73% is not a chance to recover. It is how you spent the money so far

  • it was a typo in 4.5, now it is correct
    cost variance is BCWP-ACWP

  • Could you post your calculations so they can be of help for the other learners?

  • Are you sure you are making the right calculations?

  • Are you sure that CPI is > 1?

  • Dear Learners
    welcome in the final week of our journey!
    I hope you enjoyed the course so far. You looked at many topics re project management in the previous weeks. I have appreciated your insightful comments and I thank you for the very active engagement in this MOOC.
    In this fourth week, we are going to refine our understanding of the monitoring of the...

  • Yes, 'return' is not used to mean 'profit' here

  • Exactly: it gives immediately a grasp of the project status

  • Yes!

  • The analysis does not infer directly a level of resource usage, but you can figure it out if you know who is assigned to the activities.

  • Hi Philip, This is just a method to evaluate time and cost in a clear way

  • thanks for this: typos amended

  • You will find my template to help in doing this

  • Hi Seymur, the ratios are always calculated with the EV as a reference: see my formulas in the next step

  • Very interesting point! The Earned Value Analysis can help in making this kind of projections. It is a baseline analysis of what we have today, in comparison to the pre-existing plan. Then every projection and change is possible.

  • you are not required to draw a graph, but I will teach how to do an Earned Value Analysis

  • of course: Microsoft Project helps in Earned Value Analysis. But you can also use my Excel template (see the next steps)

  • thanks for your comment

  • yes of course, it makes much sense for small projects. You can also switch to a different timescale based on hours

  • You can look again at the example in the video and try to replicate it on a piece of paper

  • It will appear once you enable the editing of the Excel file (at the top of the spreadsheet) and you type in some values

  • Hi Alex, you could create the contingency budget on a second sheet

  • In this case, looking at the late start and finish dates would help very much

  • The video is to show the logic. There tools (such as Microsoft Project) to do the calculations automatically, but it is very important to understand the logic

  • The Gantt does not always help to see critical paths especially in complex projects

  • Hi, you could set the HD view clicking on HD at the bottom right of the video

  • You can still work on Week 3, and go back to the WBS if you see that it could be of some help

  • Good point! Most of our work is now virtual

  • Dear Learners
    we are in the middle of our journey, and I am sure you will find the rest of this course enjoyable. The planning phase has just finished and everything is ready to start our projects!
    We all found ourselves into already running projects probably not designed by us: now it is time to understand how they can be managed.
    I am exited to read your...

  • A presto!

  • Take your time, but remember to record your progress clicking on "Mark as complete" at the bottom of each step

  • You will find the next two weeks less demanding in terms of time, but still useful and interesting

  • This week was quite demanding, but I though it would make sense to conclude the planning phase at this stage, and move on to implementation on the next. You will find the next two weeks less "crowded"

  • Thanks for your comment. I believe that CPM is someway more difficult but it could be useful to understand dependencies between activities

  • CPM is not an easy topic: feel free to ask me questions. You can also go on to week 3 and go back at the end

  • A lot of work! But I hope you will still have the time to go through week 3

  • Hi Rebecca, let me know how I can help

  • to find the late finish date, you look at all the successors, to find out the one with the smallest late start date

  • That is true. The Belbin model would help in understanding potential conflicts

  • That is true. The cash flow analysis will be introduced in another MOOC on Finance: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/personal-financial-planning-and-budgeting

  • Hi Yusuf, the WBS is a general concept which might be used in different areas. Could you provide me with a reference so I can check?

  • For learning Microsoft Project I recommend this book: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/microsoft_press/2016/05/02/new-book-microsoft-project-2016-step-by-step/
    There is also a version for Project 2013

  • Thank you, much appreciated. You can add me on LinkedIn

  • It is not a simple topic and there is much more to see on it: free float, multiple critical paths. In a full training module, it is probably the central topic. But from this first introduction, you can see already how you can intervene on your project. For instance: you can figure out where to speed up your project dedicating more resources (people or money).