Cooks, Recipes and Ingredients

To make a meal, you need ingredients and a recipe. A recipe defines sequencing, quantities, timing etc. This is analogous to a project's processes (ingredients) and life-cycle (recipe). For a project, the attributes of cost, schedule and quality are properties that emerge from the recipes and ingredients. But how important is the recipe? This paper has found instances where a project's recipe had a 16-fold cost difference using the exact same ingredients. This suggests that a good cook can make a great meal almost regardless of the ingredients. Many Project Managers inadvertently become chiefs of their projects and create new recipes in their attempt to recover their project. However, few managers are aware of the outcome of the recipes they create. When things turn out unexpectedly, generally badly, they blame the ingredients and not the recipe. This paper shows how a business can characterize a recipe to meet business goals, define it in a structured way (a reference model) and then use that definition to plan and monitor a project. The method has been used at Rolls-Royce since 2002 and has been shown to improve project success, halving the level of scrap and rework whilst holding schedule. In one case, this method brought a 45% cost reduction to a project with only a small increase to schedule. The concepts behind this paper are not new, but the notation used made it easy to define the ideal recipe, plan projects and to track them against the ideal recipe. This paper describes the background, benefits and methods to develop your own project recipes. This paper is aimed at project managers, process architects and systems engineers. It defines a unified language to bridge all three needs in a language that can be understood by all.