Unsettled About Variation
September 20th, 2003 by Hal
My exploration of variation started with a chapter title The Corrupting Influence of Variability in Factory Physics (2nd Ed.), by Hopp and Spearman. This book had a huge influence on the development of the Last Planner System of Production Control™ and Lean Construction. (I've skimmed the book a few times.) A 2nd huge influence on Last Planner and Lean Construction was Goldratt's dice game. The game shows the compounding negative effects of dependence and variability in process environments. One more influence on me was my visits to Japan and on-going study of quality.
The generally accepted wisdom is variability is bad. But that accepted wisdom was developed in the production world not the project world. So I decided to start over and look at variability in the project world to see if I would reach any different conclusions. Already I have some new questions. And I suspect those questions will keep me occupied for some time.
I am also clear that the process perspective promoted by the PMIers is not serving us. Projects are not processes. (Someone remind me to come back to this.)
I'll keep going on my current writing path 'til my readers tell me to stop. I can see the breakdown-tolerant project environment continuing while I develop some thoughts around two more steps:
- making commitments with confidence and
- being robust to remaining breakdowns.
I'll then return to 'good variation'. I'm unsettled about where that will take me. There are two issues that I've been writing about since this blog began:
- projects are people-centered and
- effective controls are for people in action.
I also intend to examine the role of leadership as it pertains to all of these issues and project success as I go.
One last comment, I'm not really a leanie, agilista, TOC guy, nor am I a motivationist. I can find usefulness in the worlds of agile software development and CCPM (agile, lean, and CCPM project approaches are all more successful than usual project approaches), but I'm unsatisfied with the (theoretical) foundations of the approaches. I have a yearning for taxonomies and a language for designing projects and the organizations that carry them out. And this blog is where I will continue writing about my search.
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September 21st, 2003 at 1:53 am
This one is for your yearning for taxonomies Hal,
:
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/publications/documents/93.reports/93.tr.006.html
Sadly enough, it’s again software project management stuff, but what can you expect… the web is TI kingdom
Also for the record, I am not an «agilista» either. I’m a «conversationalist and a learning beast» craving on uncertainty.
Cheers from Montreal
September 21st, 2003 at 12:01 pm
Hal,
Have you read ‘Managing the Design Factory’ by Donald Reinertsen? In it he shows that information is most efficiently generated when half of the tests we perform to generate information fail. If we are doing design and looking to discover something, rapid failure which is fixed quickly is the most efficient approach. In other words variation is GOOD for a design process.
Last week I went to a talk by Watts Humphreys, the father of CMM. I was startled to hear constant references in his talk to the basic principles of Scientific Management. After the talk he was asked about these references. He said that he is a fan of Frederick Taylor’s Scientific Management, and I finally realized why I find CMM so distasteful: it is predicated on a failed theory of management which has been widely discredited in production for about three decades.
It occurs to me that PMI’s approach, similarly based on task decomposition, is based on the same discredited theory of management.
Mary Poppendieck
September 21st, 2003 at 2:51 pm
Hi Mary,
I haven’t read Managing the Design Factory. I can see how failures can be good variation. Particularly if you have designed the project for failing quickly and without blame.
I’ve had too much experience with CMM. I am disappointed that SEI is affiliated with it. My previous experrience with CMU was so positive. Whether its scientific management, or any approach that understands human actions through decomposition, it is failed. One can’t understand what it is to be human by just looking at what happens at the cellular level.
Just between us *wink* I think I’m onto something with my latest line of inquiry. I have that same feeling that I remember playing hide-n-seek when I found the unfindable hiding place. I just couldn’t sit there. Thanks for reading, commenting, and being part of the inquiry.
September 21st, 2003 at 6:27 pm
The success of scrum, xp, and other agile methods came from pragmaticly trying things to and paying attent to whether they they work, rather than theories.
If I recall scientific history correctly, experimental results often precede theory — a good theory explains old results and predicts new results.