Project e-Tip of the Week

April 30th, 2003 by Hal

People frequently ask me for advice on adopting a lean approach on their projects. I write them, either by email or in Yahoo! discussion groups. Instead, I've decided to offer my advice in this weblog. Each Wednesday I will post a Project e-Tip of the Week. Subscribers of Reforming Project Management will get the weekly Project e-Tip in their Bloglet email each Thursday morning. If you haven't yet subscribed, then just add your email address in the subscription box to the left. That way you won't miss any of the e-Tips.

I have created an e-Tip Archive (look for the link in the navigation bar above and at the bottom of each e-Tip) and Adobe PDF versions of each Project e-Tip to make it convenient to share these with your team mates. I am looking for a javascript function so readers can email a Project e-Tip to a friend. Can anyone help me with that?

I encourage readers to submit their proposals for Project e-Tips. If I publish your submission, then I will give you a one-year subscription to Business Book Summaries or at your choice a copy of one of my favorite books. Of course I am the sole decision-maker regarding publishing submissions!

Here's my first Project e-Tip

The Project Reformer's e-Tip of the Week

001: Chart the Reliability of Task Completions

How often have we heard, "You get what you measure." Well, the ultimate measure of performance of your planning system is how often you and your team are completing what you set out to do. In Last Planner™ terms we call that PPC - percent of plan complete. It is measured as promised tasks completed divided by promised tasks. Post a chart on the wall in a place where your team meets. Every day (or at least once a week) record the percent of tasks completed as promised. In addition to the percent note the ratio, for instance 7/10. Conduct daily coordination meetings in front of the chart. In no time work coordinators/team leaders/last planners will learn how to promise reliably. Last Planner is a trademark of The Center for Innovation in Project and Production Management www.leanconstuction.org

©2003 Hal Macomber | weblog.halmacomber.com | e-Tip Archive | PDF | Submit Tip

LPSThe Last Planner System® is a lean approach to planning and delivering projects. It is based on a hierarchy of planning: should, can, will, and did. LPS is not a computer system. It is a set of protocols corresponding with the four above items: pull planning, look-ahead planning, task planning, and daily coordination. The Last Planner System is a registered trademark of the Lean Construction Institute. Last Planner SystemThe Last Planner System® is a lean approach to planning and delivering projects. It is based on a hierarchy of planning: should, can, will, and did. LPS is not a computer system. It is a set of protocols corresponding with the four above items: pull planning, look-ahead planning, task planning, and daily coordination. The Last Planner System is a registered trademark of the Lean Construction Institute.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 30th, 2003 at 11:35 pm and is tagged: PM practice, tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. Convert this post to a PDF document.

3 Responses to “Project e-Tip of the Week”

1. Claude Emond Says:
   May 1st, 2003 at 12:05 pm

   a fantastic ‘e-nitiative’, Hal. You can be sure that I will be reading those tips very attentively and share my own related ideas when possible.

   Another reason for me to keep posted and rush people to your weblog for sound and refreshing advice.

   Cheers,

   Claude
   Claude

2. Hal Says:
   May 1st, 2003 at 4:06 pm

   Frank makes important points. The practice is recommended for the day-to-day and weekly coordination of task completion. The reliability of one performer’s task completion allows the next performer to plan their mobilization and make promises for completion. This keeps work flowing avoiding the usual delays seen on constuction projects and where multiple teams interact to deliver on the promise of the project.

   We do not recommend (agreeing with Frank) that you use initial activity schedules as the basis for measuring the reliability of the planning system. Like Frank, we say that the promises we all want to keep are the ones we make to the customer. That would entail promises about project completion and interim promises for ‘deliverables’ of different types. The balance of the scheduling-like planning dates are useful as a basis for continuing the planning with the project performers as the project proceeds.

   I take exception to Frank’s characterization empty information of the percent of kept promises. We have found studying why we are able to succeed is usually more fruitful than the ever-so prevalent preoccupation we have with why we failed. We do suggest people track and characterize plan failures (tasks promised by Last Planners that were not completed as promised). [There will be an up-coming Project e-Tip on this.] Investigasting the causes of failure is useful for avoiding those failures. However, we invariably learn more from studying what is working. We first learned this from the Gallup study that served as a basis of the best-seller First, Break All the Rules.

   For those of you who know more than a little about the Theory of Cosntraints and Critical Chain based Project Management probably see where Frank and I diverge. Some people misunderstand that disagreement as having to do with lean thinking. It is really about the linguistic action perspective.

   p.s. Frank and I are big fans of each other. I look forward to reading every comment he leaves for readers and me. :+:

3. Bernard Ertl Says:
   May 1st, 2003 at 4:39 pm

   Charting the Reliability of Task Completions only makes sense for projects that have stable working conditions. Within the industrial maintenance turnaround project arena, we have found that schedule compliance will typically average around 40-50%. Instead of focusing on percentage of planned tasks completed, we measure percent of plan complete by charting the percentage of earned manhours (versus total planned manhours) against a minimum progress attainment curve. Schedules are used to provide field supervision with a focus on priorities. As long as critical and near critical jobs maintain progress, the bulk of non time critical jobs can be worked out of sequence in accordance with changing conditions in the field. Tracking earned manhours against the plan instead of actual scheduled tasks gives the team credit for staying productive when conditions arise that prevent adherance to the schedule.

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