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Through Life Management Plans (TLMPs) for In-Service and Legacy Projects
A TLMP can be initiated for an established or legacy project at any point in the CADMID cycle. TLMPs are of management benefit for all Acquisition projects and are not restricted to new programmes.
The advice here on ‘Legacy’ projects is not restricted to those that are in-service - it is equally relevant to a project in Demonstration or Manufacture that is relatively mature but has not yet developed a TLMP.
Developing TLMPs for In-Service / Legacy Projects
The main issue faced by IPTs when creating TLMPs for legacy programmes will be how to deal with the plethora of planning information, both current and historical, that already exists within the project.
The following guidance is offered on how to address this in practice:
- The TLMP should focus on the future of the project, not on the history. An important function of the TLMP is to capture key assumptions and events from the past which set the context for the future direction of the project (and indeed future projects) which are important for stakeholders to be aware of. But where possible you should make use of references, hyperlinks and annexes to point to the detailed project history rather than repeating it in the TLMP.
- A key objective of the TLMP should be to reduce and rationalise the number of other programme plans. The ‘footprint’ of the TLMP should be such that planning tools already in use on the project can either be linked directly into it, or can be subsumed and the source tool abandoned.
- The TLMP should become the primary planning and reference tool. It should not simply be plugged in as one additional layer above existing planning tools - this would negate the benefits. The TLMP will only be of long term value if it improves business processes and pays back the effort required to develop and sustain it.
- It is important to strike a balance between the effort required to develop and populate the TLMP and the benefits in return.
- Keep a clear focus on information that customers/stakeholders need to know, or may find useful to know, in order to manage the project. Agree content with key customers/stakeholders; using the TLMP Checklist [235KB DOC] as a guide to the information to be considered for inclusion.
- Focus on the most important information that is required to manage the project through to the Disposal date, ensuring that IPT objectives and Customer requirements are met.
- Consider using a web-based TLMP. This approach can be adopted by any project in any phase, but is particularly suited to larger platform programmes during the in-service phase.
