What is the DIPP? (Warning! Some wonky stuff)

That’s the title of my new article, just up at my blog.

One of the readers of my blog posted a question in the Comments with respect to a metric I had mentioned in passing:

“DIPP tracking. What is it and where can I learn more about it?”

I had not previously discussed the DIPP in my blog. It is a metric introduced in my very first project management paper, “When the DIPP Dips: A P&L Index for Project Performance”. It was published in Project Management Journal in Sep 1992 and later reprinted as a chapter in the PMI book Essentials of Project Control. (This was back when I thought it might be the only thing I’d ever publish in PM, and DIPP stands for Devaux’s Index of Project Performance.)

In the PMJ article, the DIPP was suggested as a formula to be used when analyzing a project for possible termination. By the time I published my first book in 1999, I’d realized that it could be used as an index to track a project’s EMV (or ROI) against plan throughout execution: one number that would incorporate scope, schedule and cost data (and earned value). It would provide the sponsor/customer with the data he wants and the project team with a baseline to track against and to beat.

I have developed other techniques since, but the DIPP is still something of which I’m most proud (well, that and being asked once to introduce Sir Garfield Sobers at a cricket dinner!). It’s a little complex, but I give a thumbnail of it in the blog.

Fraternally in project management,

Steve the Bajan