Project Reliability Soars when Work Is Ready
August 31st, 2002 by HalSomeone must take responsibility for seeing that the work that should be done is in a ready state so that it can be done and elicit promises from project participants so that it will be done.
Ok, so if that makes so much sense, then why don't we systematically and organizationally address the issue of making work ready? One reason is that we act like announcing what must be done vis-a-vis a master schedule is enough for responsible people to successfully perform their tasks. That is all too often insufficient. Sure, all good projects have an always up-to-date master schedule representing what 'should' be done, but what about what 'can' be done? By 'can' I mean tasks that are in a ready state: the wherewithall has been addressed for both starting and completing the task. While this might appear to be sufficient, it still lacks one essential element: someone says it 'will' be done by a specific time. Only when an individual commits or promises to complete a task do we have a scheduled item that we can rely on. Within the lean project community we refer to this as should-can-will planning.
Are we done? Not quite yet. We don't want to leave reliability to chance on projects, therefore someone must take responsibility for seeing that the work that should be done is in a ready state so that it can be done and elicit promises from project participants so that it will be done. We call that role the project manager.
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