Enjoy the holidays!

Dealing with Cursed Projects offers some good advice for rescuing projects. Columnist William T. Kelly advice can be summarized as engage with your project team and remember that your mood is contagious. While the advice may not appear to be radical, nonetheless it is different from the usual project behavior. So, you might ask, "How do we avoid the cursed project?" I suggest it's much of the same advice:

1. Stay close to your team;
2. Give them what they need;
3. Make unconditionally constructive assessments;
4. Keep the story (context) of the project alive; and
5. Learn from the people performing the project through ongoing planning with them.

Too many projects become cursed…in my opinion, only due to neglect.

I have another writing project that readers may be interested in. John Satta and I are writing a weblog CoachBlog™. John was invited by Thomas Leonard, founder of Coachville, to explore the role of blogging for coaches. John also has his own weblog Yellow Sticky.

This week I set out to show syndicated learning to the coaching community by writing a five-day tutorial on reliable promising. While it is not very ambitious, the series shows most of the elements of syndicated learning. (I'll comment more on that at the end of the series.) Do the reliable promising tutorial for a boost in reliability on your project. Or, invite others to do so!

In the coming weeks John and I will explore how one can coach through blogging. Should be fun. Stop by and subscribe. Please leave a comment if you do the exercises.

While going about my day, I recalled two other observations about the jobsite and project team I visited last week.

• There was tremendous trust among the members of the team and the extended team. People shared what they were doing. They shared their materials. They shared their opinions (even in the presence of a visitor and the COO). And they were quick to make offers to each other. If you don't know how important trust is to the success of a project team, then try distrust!
• The team had their attention on results. They were not just going through the motions of a weekly planning exercise. They kept the concerns for the up-coming week present in their conversation.

BTW, I think this team came together late spring - early summer. While some of the team members have worked together on other projects, the mix of subcontractors was new. These folks understand that the quality of their relationships matter to the success of the project. They continue to give it their attention.

My friend Joe (Learning About Lean) asked me to offer more observations and assessments of my jobsite visit last week. I haven't discussed this with the project team, so out of courtesy I will offer some general comments based on my visits with them and with a number of projects in the last month.

Greg Howell and I regularly visit well-run projects. It seems that only people who are doing relatively well are sincere about their intentions to improve. There's a book that expresses that sentiment, Better Makes Us Best. The team I visited had that attitude. The members ask questions, invite assessments, and reach out to each other for help. I can't stress the importance of this enough. I'll take a rookie team who asks for help over a know-it-all experienced team any day.

Well-organized jobsites and high project reliability go together. The site I visited was clean and organized. While I didn't inquire how long particular material had been on site, there wasn't much lying around. This is consistent with lean principles, specifically eight wastes. Now when I see a well-organized site I expect to see a project that is on time and on budget.

Planning is an everyday practice. I was particularly struck by the negotiating underway last week. I am used to seeing people trying to reschedule today's activities based on what didn't get done or went wrong yesterday. The negotiating that was going on had to do with work to be performed in the coming weeks. There are two significant points to that:

1. The team saw the specifics of the up-coming look-ahead plan as just one approach to meeting the milestones as promised to the customer;
2. Planning is an on-going collaborative process that always includes those people executing the plan.

The team in Colorado and every other team taking a lean approach see planning and execution as tightly coupled or extensions of each other. This is unlike the description offered by PMI and in general practice where planning, execution, and control are seen as separate functions performed by different people.

One last observation…I noticed a wonderful mood among the project team. Some people might say, "Of course! The project is on schedule and on budget." Sure, that helps. Or, is their mood contributing to the good results? Time and again I see the project leaders of high performing teams taking the time to shape the mood of the team. The leaders do this in the stories they tell. One way of doing this is with a project k-log. I wrote about this October 8th Project Klogs: Changing Paradigms. An even better way is by being with the project team everyday. Not only are you in a position to tell the story, you are part of it.

Builders Seek to Demolish Inefficiency:
Work is Completed More Quickly With Better Project Management

The subtitle reminds me of those usual local newspaper articles, Stores Crowded before the Holidays and Dog Bites Man. In spite of the title, the article is quite well-written. The publication is available only by subscription. The article appeared in the December issue of Lean Manufacturing Advisor. The editors at Productivity Press interviewed leaders of companies adopting a lean approach to construction projects along with Greg Howell, my partner and Executive Director of the Center for Innovation in Project and Production Management, d.b.a. Lean Construction Institute. Instead of offering a summary, I'll provide some of Paul Reiser's quotes. Paul is Vice President for Production and Innovation at The Boldt Company. Take note of Paul's title. I rarely see construction company titles that refer to production, let alone innovation.

It�s not uncommon for our best lean projects to be characterized by 20 percent schedule improvement, significant cost savings, and highly satisfied customers.

Last year we compared concrete productivity on lean projects versus non-lean projects. The results indicated a 25 percent improvement in concrete productivity. The improvement may not be completely attributed to lean, but we do recognize that eager adopters of lean on our construction projects also tend to be innovative thinkers when it comes to operations design. When you combine lean production with innovative operations design, the result is highly reliable and productive project delivery.

(The Last Planner™ System) forces people to get together once a week for an hour and do collaborative planning. They make commitments to each other based on pull. When we meet the next week, we track the reliability of our planning, how many of those commitments did we actually meet the plan percent complete�

One of the biggest benefits is a much higher level of communication and awareness. It becomes a highly collaborative process. There�s a new feeling of communication and participation for the people that are actually doing the work. We've empowered people on the job sites to make decisions.

Because of the success we�ve had at the job site production level, we�re trying to drive lean further into the design phase. Traditional project delivery is fragmented. Design takes place in a design office and the drawings are thrown over the wall, so to speak, to the contractor. We say it shouldn�t have been designed this way, and we throw the contracts back over the wall.

We are mapping our job support processes including job setup, cost forecasting, payroll, accounts payable, purchasing, tool and material handling, and more. Value stream mapping these processes has revealed 30 percent to 60 percent waste in specific areas.

Along with the article, Productivity included some of the planning documents Boldt uses and a mini-case study Lean is the Right Formula for Rice Chemistry Building detailing Linbeck Construction's early experience adopting lean project management — another good read.

Maybe we should get used to seeing the headline Work is Completed More Quickly With Better Project Management replacing the now usual Construction Project Delayed.

Last week I observed the Last Planner™ System in operation at a good-sized construction project by The Neenan Company. After touring the jobsite I was able to sit-in on their weekly work planning meeting. The team was doing quite well keeping the project on schedule and on budget.

The meeting took the usual form:

• Reviewing last week's performance,
• Exploring and recording the reasons for plan failure
• Examining the look-ahead plan for the readiness of up-coming work, and
• Committing to next week's weekly work plan.

I was particularly impressed with the conversation. Participants freely commented, questioned, and negotiated commitments. Tasks were clear and had due dates. These folks knew how to make reliable promises.

At the end of the meeting I made the following suggestions to the project manager:

1. Post a graph of weekly PPC performance,
2. Post a pareto chart of the reasons for plan variance, and
3. Add visual cues to the milestone plan hanging on the wall.

I look forward to a return visit in the spring.

Here's a synopsis of the Projects, Planning, and Promising lecture at CSU. I started, rather than finishing, with my recommendations for improving project performance. Later, we discussed the theory behind the recommendations.

1. Assign accountability for making work ready; don't proceed with work that is not ready to start and finish.
2. Ask performers (or their supervisors) to reliably promise each assignment (task) on the upcoming weekly work plan.
3. Adopt a planning practice that emphasizes learning.

The recommendations provoked numerous questions. They were a great segue to the discussion of theory. Many of you long-time readers can probably guess what I said. Here goes:

• Projects happen in the future. The future is uncertain and unknowable. Ready work that is promised by performers results in significantly higher project reliability.
• Consistent with an uncertain future, act at the last responsible moment. This allows the project manager and the team to incorporate into the plan what is discovered, the developing skills of project participants, and the evolving conditions of satisfaction of the customer.
• Projects are performed by people. While managing people is often a project manager's greatest challenge, people offer the project manager even greater possibilities. People observe; people judge; people learn; and people innovate. Leverage the value of people by including them in the planning on a continuing basis.

Bolivar Senior, Professor of Construction Management and sponsor for the CSU event, noted in a comment to the previous posting about the consistency of the students' questions and comments. To that I'll add the students were certainly no pushovers. Their questions were direct and challenging and their comments showed they were well-grounded by experience.

Thank you all at CSU for the opportunity to share my thinking.

We wrap-up our Lean Project Leadership (Shusa) Program this week with a visit to Colorado. (The next program starts the end of January 2003.) While there I'll be delivering a guest lecture at the Colorado State University graduate program of Construction Management while Greg Howell visits the University of Colorado to do the same. Both of us are speaking on Projects, Planning, and Promising. We are trying out our thinking in advance of writing a paper for the 12th Annual International Group for Lean Construction Conference. The conference will be held at Virginia Polytechnic at the end of July 2003. (No IGLC program description is currently available.)

I'll also be visiting a a construction project where the project team has been operating on the Last Planner System™. I plan to write about both the lectures and the visit to the jobsite. With a little luck, I might even get to ski!

Disruptive Technologies Can Be Useful by Sean Gallagher. The article explores the role electronic collaboration tools have on projects.

Even IBM has had to adjust. As relationships created by virtual teaming on projects have proliferated, IBM has changed how it manages people. Cherbonneau says team members and managers now have to agree on the same objectives—completing specific features by specific dates—so workers are focused on one set of goals.

Imagine that, a project where team members are aligned around the same goals and priorities! I didn't know projects could be otherwise successful. The author warns "…working online can speed change but…(result in) fallout." Aargh!

Ken Harden, Builder.com, writes Remember your stars as you work with problem players. The author advises project managers to not let weak players drag down the team, particularly the team members that give 100% everyday. His advice, "Find an acceptable point of failure, and then let it happen." He's saying to let the breakdown occur to surface the problem with the poorer performers. While that might look unacceptable to many high-achieving project managers, Harden argues it is often the only way to bring the necessary attention to the project. For project managers that have team members assigned to the project by others, this may be a reasonable point of leverage. Harden highlights the concern by noting that "The most dysfunctional teams are always going to get the lion’s share of the company’s attention and remedial resources." That point is well-supported by research.

In the best-selling book First, Break All the Rules authors Buckingham and Coffman share 25 years of Gallop data on how disproportionately high attention to poor performers gets in the way of teams learning from their high performers. I'm not sure Buckingham and Coffman would agree with Harden's specific advice, but they are very clear on one point: spend more time with your high performers. You will learn from them and raise the standards of performance for the whole team.

Finally…I got archiving to work. You'll find an Archives link both on the left-hand column and along the navigation bar at the top of the page. The Archives are weekly going back to my first posting on August 26, 2002.

A few weeks ago I added this weblog to the HOT or NOT weblog rating service. I was looking for two things. First, I wanted some feedback on how valuable my postings are for the readers. Second, I was looking for some promotion from the HOT or NOT service. At this time the rating is "8″ out of a possible "10″. While that doesn't sound bad, a straight numerical average of the 25 people who left their ratings would result in a average rating of "6″. ("Hot or Not" makes some adjustment to calculate the rating.) So I'm wondering…is this weblog really a "6″ or is it an "8″ (or something else)? Please go to the HOT or NOT site and leave your rating. AND come back to this posting and please leave your comments. Let me know what you find valuable and what I could be doing to provide more value. Thanks.

Heavyweight vs. Lightweight (Project) Methodologies

Reading Jason P. Charvat offers us a view of the conventional wisdom of project management. In Charvat's latest article in Builder.com he sets out to compare project methodologies on the two ends of the spectrum of approaches. In so doing, he gives credence to 'one approach is better' or more suitable than the other depending on the circumstances of the project and the style preferences of the project manager. Charvat does a superficial job of describing the practices. He fails to recognize poor practices saying,

"Sometimes a project is simply cobbled together out of a series of quick-paced decisions. This can be effective if the project is small, but as the project grows, it can become increasingly difficult to add new features."

Charvat dwells on the weaknesses of the heavyweight approach while giving emphasis to the benefits of the lightweight methodologies.

In describing a "practical example" of a heavyweight approach he says,

"Everything needs to be planned far ahead on such a lengthy project, and management likes it to be predictable. They have this down to a fine art."

Sure, people want predictability and control, but planning to the gnat's ass months and quarters in advance doesn't produce that predictability. Project team members will tell you so. He fails to grasp that point.

Charvat lists 10 "essential points" for selecting a project methodology.

• Budget
• Team
• size
• Project criticality
• Technology used
• Documentation
• Training
• Best practices/lessons learned
• Tools and techniques
• Existing processes
• Software

Yet he fails to tell you how to consider those issues.

Charvat goes on to sing the praises of the lightweight methodologies (scrum, agile, XP, etc.). He lists one benefit after the next, but like many others, he misses the central issue of projects — projects occur in the future and consequently face uncertainty and variability. While we might show some deference to the preferred style of the project manager, the main concern we have on projects is to manage in a way that acknowledges uncertainty. Further, we certainly don't want to add to the variability on the project by multi-tasking and from poor coordination of action. To some degree or another projects need to be managed for learning and innovation while avoiding the introduction of (more) variability and mitigating inherent risk.

Neither heavyweight nor lightweight methodologies (as described by Charvat) explicitly consider the underlying nature of the project setting. Take a look at the article and leave your rating. Oh…stay tuned; Charvat promises to examine and compare the different lightweight project methodologies. You can bet I'll be offering my views!

Nice book review by Dan Seewer on Builder.com of A Practical Guide to eXtreme Programming by David Astels, Granville Miller, and Miroslav Novak Hands-on guide demonstrates what XP is really about. The book has been around since February, long enough that Amazon offers used copies for $17.75. The Amazon customer reviews are equally as positive as Seewer's review.

For a more comprehensive and useful review see Notes on a Practical Guide and Thoughts on Software Development by Ognian Pushev appearing in the Journal of Object Technology. JOT is published by ETH, the highly-regarded Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Pushev goes into detail summarizing key points in the book as well as commenting on the book. I recommend the book review even to people doing construction projects. Many practices of XP are transferrable to all project environments, particularly the practices for design, engineering, and architecture.

I've been teaching listening from the time I started teaching project management. Invariably, a large percentage (often a great majority) of the sources of mis-coordination on projects is the result of project participants not listening. Mis-listening just adds to the variability and uncertainty on our projects. You can do something about this.

One action to take immediately is to check out The Listening Leader. This is a weekly email newsletter by Dr. Rick Bommelje. He is a member of The International Listening Association where you'll find resources to build your competence. I'm reprinting today's newsletter message for you. While it is written about the functional manager, just substitute project for functional and it still applies.

THE FUNCTIONAL MANAGER: LISTENING IS A MUST FOR SUCCESS

Listening is a hallmark of a mature leader, and its one that requires patience, empathy and approachability. Obviously, functional managers also have to communicate with their people. At this level, there's no room for inarticulate or isolated managers or ones who can only communicate with their direct reports. With more levels to penetrate, functional managers must engage in dialogue with people up and down the line and in all sub functions. Some of this dialogue can be facilitated by the Internet, Intranet, faxes, and so on, but there's no substitute for face-to-face conversations and the emotional engagement that results from them. Again, this means making more time for this activity and taking away time from a less important one.

Functional managers must master a variety of listening skills. For instance, they must be able to listen not only to what is being said but what is not being said. They must be alert for topics that are avoided, for hesitancy about addressing a particular problem. They also must be able to cross-check frames of reference. By this we mean that each individual in a conversation has a particular set of assumptions and experiences that shape his/her words. This is particularly true when it comes to measurement. One person may say the results are outstanding, while another views the same results as mediocre; it all depends on the frames of reference. Functional managers learn to take these frames of references into consideration during conversations to avoid misinterpretation.

Source: The Leadership Pipeline, Ram Charan, et al, pp. 73-74.

Ram Charan is a leading thinker of leadership, management, and general business along with being a prolific writer. One of my favorites is his book What Every CEO Wants You to Know.

You can subscribe to The Listening Leader by sending an email to: listeningleader-on@lists.webvalence.com.