New Article: The Integrated Master Plan - Terrible Name, but a Great Idea
Quick Watch: Show Stakeholders Only What They Need to See
Live Event (April 8): The Integrated Master Plan: Terrible Name, but a Great Idea
PM Best Practice: Define "Done" Before You Build the Schedule
Tuesday Brief: This week we're looking at one of the more underappreciated frameworks in project controls: the Integrated Master Plan. Eric Christoph makes the case for why this oddly named tool is actually a straightforward and powerful way to define progress before scheduling begins, and he's bringing it to MPUG live on Wednesday. We've also got a quick Dale Howard video that shows you how to collapse your detailed schedule into a clean stakeholder view in under four minutes.
New Article:The Integrated Master Plan - Terrible Name, but a Great Idea
The Integrated Master Plan doesn't do itself any favors with its name. But strip that away and what you have is a simple, disciplined structure for defining what "done" looks like at every major point in a project before a single task gets scheduled.
In this new article, Eric Christoph walks through the three-element framework at the heart of the IMP: events, accomplishments, and criteria. Together they shift the measure of progress from vague percent-complete estimates to verifiable outcomes. If your schedules struggle to hold up under stakeholder scrutiny, the problem may start here.
The full article on the TMS site goes deeper on how the IMP connects to the GAO Schedule Assessment Guide and how it maps to the DoD acquisition lifecycle.
Quick Watch: Show Stakeholders Only What They Need to See
Your detailed schedule is built for you. Your stakeholders don't need all of it, and showing them everything often creates more confusion than confidence.
In this short video, Dale Howard demonstrates a two-click technique in Microsoft Project that collapses your full schedule down to a clean, deliverable-level view your clients and executives can actually read. Under four minutes, immediately applicable.
Live Event (April 8): The Integrated Master Plan - Terrible Name, but a Great Idea
Eric Christoph returns to MPUG this Wednesday to walk through the IMP as a practical planning tool, not a defense industry artifact. The session covers where the IMP came from, how it relates to the Integrated Master Schedule, and why the distinction matters for anyone trying to build a schedule that holds up to scrutiny.
What You'll Learn:
How events, accomplishments, and criteria work together to define objective progress
The difference between the IMP and IMS, and why it matters for schedule credibility
How IMP principles improve stakeholder alignment and status reporting in complex projects
📅 Wednesday, April 8, 2026 🕛 12:00 – 1:00 PM ET 📍 Live on Zoom 🏅 1 PDU (Ways of Working)
MPUG hosts live events with leading experts on Wednesdays from 12:00pm - 1:00pm ET! MPUG members get access to live events where you get direct access to industry leaders, actionable insights, hands-on training, and opportunities to earn PDUs.
PM Best Practice: Define "Done" Before You Build the Schedule
Percent complete is a progress measure that sounds precise and rarely is. A task at 80% complete tells you very little about whether the conditions for the next phase of work have actually been met.
The practice: at each major milestone in your plan, define the specific, testable criteria that must be satisfied before that milestone is considered complete. Not "design is mostly done" but "design review approved, redlines resolved, and baseline updated." When completion is tied to evidence rather than estimation, status conversations with stakeholders get shorter and more credible.
