Construction Summit 2003 — Readers Questioned

March 17th, 2003 by Hal

A few readers asked me to comment further on my postings about Construction Summit 2003. Mostly I was not clear about my views.

In the Day One postings I wrote,

The presenters were unusually supportive of web-based solutions. While talking extensively of shared data they neglected to speak about how the data would be used or the day-to-day practical issues of project coordination and bottoms-up planning.

In later conversations with presenters and other session participants people argued first you have to collect the data (as much as possible) then you modify your processes based on it. Baloney! Let's get practical if we are to invest scarce capital in purchasing systems and implementation.

Bottom-line, the daily value-adding work of projects is coordinating with one another. It's not record-keeping; it's not report writing; and it's not reporting on budget variances. Well-designed systems of all types are built around the central value-producing actions. (Take a look at the new web-based CRM applications to see.) Project systems must be based on coordinating action with one another for the successful release of work to another.

The other issue is planning, or better said, on-going planning among the people who perform the work (bottoms-up). Regular bottoms-up planning isn't just an alternative to up-front detailed scheduling, it is the approach that best matches the nature of project situations. Projects are uncertain by nature. The participants in projects learn, discover, collaborate, and innovate as they engage with each other on the project. Project systems can help or hinder that, hence the preponderance of offerings of project collaboration tools. However, those tools miss the principal aspect that re-planning is the best practice.

In the posting Project Firms Need Radical Change I wrote,

Leaders look for ways to guide (steer) their businesses…The recommendations don't have steering qualities. Mark Zweig is saying manage the business from the bottom up. When he said radical change he meant it. He just didn't share what was behind his prescriptions.

There were no steering mechanisms for Mark Zweig to offer. I suggested that executives look for points of leverage, e.g., trim tabs. Mark was suggesting firms adopt practices that are far more distributed and beyond one person's control. While Mark never used the words "emergence" or "complex adaptive systems", he is surely in the camp of people who believe in the power of an informed, competent, highly distributed, and aligned organization acting on its own…because it's that way anyway.

The balance of the summit was out of sync with Mark Zweig's call for radical change and the panel discussion of the merits and practices of a lean approach to project delivery. There's no reason to expect otherwise. We live in a world that is successful based on the strength of our science and engineering. That world is basically reductionist and deterministic. We extend that thinking inappropriately to people and projects. And then we wonder why our results are unsatisfactory. On with the reform.

Report from Construction Summit 2003 — Day One

Report from Construction Summit 2003 — Day Three

What Is the Best Day of the Week?

Construction Summit 2003

It’s Almost Like Being at the TWI Summit

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2 Responses to “Construction Summit 2003 — Readers Questioned”

Claude Emond Says:
March 18th, 2003 at 1:25 pm
What you say Hal is roughly what I understood about your original satisfaction level with the summit on your 3 real-time postings. As you say, on with the reform.

As for the metaphor of project management your were alluding as ’still-looking-for-one’ in one of your last comments to other comments, how about a ‘collective leap’ (a small one with a small team is an ‘evolutionary leap’, a big one with a small or large team a ‘revolutionary leap’, a big one that changes radically a whole enterprise and the way it does business a ‘quantum leap’ or –why not– a ‘mutation’). If it sounds interesting, let me know and I explain further where it comes from.
Basic idea - a project is a setting stage to increase value production levels as opposed to current value production in an organization, etc., etc.My working paper on the ‘Project Age’- although not showing any awareness about CAS when it was written- can tell you more about where I am coming from with this value creation stuff and ’stepping-up’ (leaping upwards) value production levels in ortganizations through projects.
address: http://www.theprojectpage.com/id37.htm

Bonne journ�e

Claude
Claude Emond Says:
March 18th, 2003 at 4:24 pm
You are right about the ’special case’ of projects- projects for ourselves, not for others !!! — surely due to a professional paradigm linked to my major line of work ( helping clients making the most out of their strategic-business projects through PMOs, project selection and prioritization processes, the use of more felxible collaborative approches to do more and faster with less etc..). But those projects are also subjected to the same complex world and pursue similar goals of improving one’s position in the world.
What prevents us to leap for and with a customer (be it internal or external) upwards increasing Value-creation through both internal and outsourced projects; surely projects made for others must have desired outcomes aimed at increasing value for those who ordered the project (be it a new building or something else)
As project performer, one and his-her team still work towards making this desired leap come through for their customer, unless they do not care for the ultimate outcome of the project, which is not only the set of deliverables produced but also the use for which they are intended…
How do you feel about this line of thought?
For the leaping environment, who said it had to be above water )

Salut

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