Pull Planning originated in 1969 in Port of Spain, Trinidad by a young project manager from New Brunswick, Canada. Slow to be recognized, Dean Kyle’s creation has gained traction in recent years as an alternative to traditional push planning methods. Using a deliverable breakdown structure, this approach focuses on right-to-left, or ‘end-first’ planning, which involves starting from the project’s deliverables and working in reverse order to identify the necessary steps to achieve them. This presentation will explore the benefits of Pull Planning when combined with Project Flow Diagrams, a powerful tool that combines horizontal Gantt bars and vertical swim lanes on a 3- dimensional time-scaled digital whiteboard.. The technique requires asking the right questions in a specific pattern with integrated bench-testing, enabling the creation of detailed, accurate plans and the identification of multiple critical paths. We are the world’s foremost authorities on Pull Planning, having worked with Dean since the 1980s. We will provide two case studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of Pull Planning in real-world situations. The 3rd chapter of Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner’s new book, ‘How Big Things Get Done’ encourages us to ‘Think From Right to Left’. Pull Planning, with the right tools and processes takes this to another level: ‘Plan from right to left’.

Every year $billions are lost as a consequence of poor project performance on one basis of calculation the rate of loss is $85,000/seconds! While improvement is obviously needed, most research on improving project performance is focused on improving the execution of the plan. However, project overruns are not always the consequence of a failure of execution, but always involves a failure of planning. Little has been done to improve planning of projects. This presentation introduces an improved process for creating effective project schedules. Object Driven Logic (ODL) is a practical approach to scheduling which focuses on identifying predecessors when planning projects. ODL schedules provides realistic data that compliments project methodologies such as Six Sigma, Agile and PRINCE2, and goes beyond simply spending money to resolves resource conflicts. The case study will show how implementing ODL using user-friendly tools and methods can take the complexity out of project planning, including critical path calculation. Quickly producing the most efficient plan, determining both sequential and parallel dependencies.