ALICE vs. CPM Scheduling: A Primer

Bringing transparency to the process

In P6, it is impossible to know whether your schedule is a good schedule. Why? Because it is the only one you have and you have nothing to compare it with. Secondly, it’s very difficult to assess. On what criteria? It is hard to peel the layers of the onions and to compare alternatives.

But the most notable difference is that P6 and traditional CPM scheduling software make it possible to create infeasible schedules. How so?  In conventional CPM software, logic ties are built manually, and therefore it is 'allowed' to create broken logic, e.g. overallocation of resources or unrealistic stacking of trades. In some cases, the software will give a warning or notification to the user, but nonetheless the schedule is intact and can be presented to clients. On this basis, assessing schedule quality becomes very challenging, as deciphering all these logic links and the assumptions behind them is almost impossible to do.

Moreover, due to the fact that CPM schedules are very rarely resource loaded, one can never be certain that the schedule logic would be sensible when adding resource limitations to the schedule.

Because ALICE is a parametric platform that takes every single data point and constraint into account, ALICE does not allow you to build with the wrong logic and generate infeasible schedules. So when you let ALICE crunch the numbers, your team can rest assured that the results are correct and sound without breaking any constraints. This is a huge improvement from a de-risking perspective. Furthermore, ALICE resource-loads the schedules it generates.

All in all, ALICE as a system takes into account a superset of constraints as compared to traditional CPM software, which governs everything with precedence. ALICE schedules are built on resource and sequence logic that satisfies the limitations the user has defined. Moreover, the solutions generated by ALICE are tied to the design and cost elements, making the schedule an even more insightful tool for decision making.

In brief, ALICE crunches a lot more complex data and ... does it right. Therefore the schedules generated are always correct. You might not like them, but they are calculated correctly.

From one scenario to millions

Mathematically there are thousands and thousands of ways to build a project, even with the simplest design. The options and construction strategies are vast.

With CPM scheduling, the user is predefining the sequence of work as part of the process i.e. adding precedence. In that way, without even realizing it, one is locking themselves in a particular solution (sequence), i.e. let's do A->B->C. But what if B->A->C was a more efficient sequence?

Traditional CPM simply does not allow you to gain visibility into these other options, let alone enable you to answer the above questions. To illustrate the point, to explore one or two more sequences usually results in an extra 2-3 months of work. So it makes sense that no additional construction options are explored; the unit economics do not allow it.

In contrast ALICE -- utilizing a parametric schedule model -- is able to explore a vastly broader set of solutions, and through optimization it displays the 'best' of them to the user. Notice that I used plural? Exactly. ALICE with a single optimization run will give you many solutions and different options to choose from. The platform did the crunching for you. All you need to do is analyze and learn from it.

A unique visual interface

Another fundamental difference is the visual nature of ALICE vs. the spreadsheet-like interface of P6, MS Project and other traditional CPM scheduling software. 

With ALICE, project teams can gather around a fully resource-loaded 5D model, which greatly improves collaboration. Humans are visual creatures, so having an interface that allows them to plan visually greatly reduces the chances of mistakes and miscommunication. In fact, research largely indicates that waste during the construction phase is largely caused by pre-construction preparations. Leveraging a modern visual planning platform like ALICE can solve these issues.

In conclusion, the differences between ALICE and CPM scheduling are vast. ALICE offers significant advantages over traditional CPM scheduling methods, both in terms of process and output. While traditional fixed CPM scheduling constrains you to manually create a single, non-optimized schedule, ALICE’s AI-powered platform allows teams to explore the entire universe of possibilities and automatically generates the most efficient schedule for your project.