Work Your Way Out of Rework by ‘Promising at the Last Responsible Moment’
March 28th, 2004 by HalThis is a continuation of my comments on Frank Patrick's series on Projects and Promises, Part 3 - Work Your Way Out of Rework.
Frank proposes 3 actions that we can take to reduce our contributions to the rework on projects:
- Get rid of task due dates
- Develop a clear understanding of the major interdependencies between tasks
- Question assumptions about "necessary" handoffs between tasks
I'll focus here on the first prescription. How could we possibly get rid of task due dates? Of course tasks have due dates. Right? Maybe not!
Frank's prescription is in the usual context of project schedules. If a task is on the schedule, then it has a due date. He's not recommending that we change that. Instead, only put those tasks on the schedule that represent promises to the customer. He says, The only dates that count are those promised outside the project. He urges us to leave all other tasks off the schedule to avoid the predictable missed task starts and finishes. I certainly agree with Frank; the only dates that matter are the ones promised to the customer. But the schedule does more for us than just represent customer promises.
Behind Frank's prescription is the phenomenon of projects Goldratt called dependence and variability. By leaving tasks off the schedule essentially allowing the task dates to float, then the project manager isn't creating dependence. Or so the argument goes. But project tasks are inherently dependent one on another. When we tasks off the schedule we don't have visibility as to what we want to do.
Let me offer an alternative:
Make (task) commitments at the last responsible moment.
This is a kind of just in time planning. Plan in levels: the master schedule includes promises to clients and milestones, the phase schedule answers the question, "How will we do the project?" the six-week look-ahead plan resolves the constraints in the schedule at activity levels, and finally the weekly work plan includes the tasks that are promised for the coming week. Those task promises are made by the performers and include completion dates. This allows others who are dependent on a task completion to plan their work and make their promises.
Curious about how well this works? The Lean Construction Institute did a study of the reliability of task completions one week in advance. The average was about 50% — about half of the tasks that people said would be completed were actually completed during the week. After putting people on the last planner system of production control™ reliability soars to greater than 80% to the day promised. With that level of reliability you won't need to be concerned with rework due to task due dates.
Read more on committing at the last responsible moment.
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March 29th, 2004 at 11:45 pm
Glad to hear others are using a similar approach. :+:
To be clear, all milestones and customer promises are ’scheduled’. Then, as the milestone date approaches, the tasks are ‘readied’ for promising by the performers. It’s quite simple and highly reliable.