The VPP works. The company featured in this short article enjoy a safety performance (injury and illness rates) that is 80% better than the usual company in its industry Occupational Hazards - OSHA's top VPP honors go to Ohio firm. Pro-Tec Coatings supplies the construction industry. Construction needs to learn from the suppliers to the industry. Check out VPP (Voluntary Protection Plan). Make it your commitment to your co-workers for 2005.

The Weekly Work Planning session is the time when performers make promises for the completion of work in front of the other project performers. This public promising is essential to producing reliable workflow. Try a thinking exercise with me to see the advantage of the approach.

Let's say you and I and another four people have working groups of people that we lead on a project together. Each of us manages a team with a different specialty. So we start our weekly work planning conversation by reviewing the promises we are making for completing work day-by-day in the coming week. I start by saying my group will have tasks A and B done on Monday, tasks C on Wed, and tasks D, E, and F on Friday. Independent of me you have planned your group's work. You have your own tasks, but your team needs to coordinate with my group. You might need access to the same physical space or controlled documents. So you ask me, "Hal will your group really be done with task B on Monday?" I say, "Sure will. We're mostly done already." "Great!" you add. "I'll then move up my task G to start on Tuesday and finish on Wednesday."

If we had individually negotiated those workplans with the project manager you would not likely have found out you could get started early in the week. Further, others on the team may now plan their work based on both the promises I made and the revised promises you made.

Performers (last planners) prepare their workplans outside the meeting. Each group submits the WWP to the project manager prior to the meeting so that the plans can be compiled into a single plan organized by workstream.

Start the weekly work planning meeting with a review of the prior week's performance. Go through the PPC (percent of promises/plan complete) for the overall project and the individual workgroups. Add the data to a graph if you haven't done so already. Have a short conversation about what you might expect in the coming week.

Next, review the Pareto data for the reasons for not completing work as promised. Look for patterns in the data from one week to the next. Examine the data by performer group, as well.

Now, have a conversation about the coming week's work by workstream not by performer. You want to give attention to how one group's promises connect to other groups' performance. This is critical to establishing a base for reliability. When one performer sees how their promises impact others, then the reliability of promising will improve. Make any necessary adjustments to individual plans so that work flows smoothly from one performer to another. Add time buffers between performers when you can expect unreliability of completion (either low performer PPC or anticipated variability in the project).

Review the workable backlog that has been planned for the coming week. Give people the opportunity to negotiate workable backlog away; for instance, I might plan to do a task that would put the project out of sequence for you. You should have the opportunity to ask me not to plan that work.

Finish the meeting with a Plus-Delta (+Δ) review.

By now you've got to be thinking, "No project work happens that reliably." That's right. Research conducted by the Lean Construction Institute showed that usual teams working from schedules are about 50% reliable completing what they set out to do sometime in the coming week. That is insufficient for coupling one workgroup's tasks to another's. However, people using these protocols are routinely getting reliability of 85% to the day promised. That is sufficient to couple work among performers and workgroups.

There's still a missing piece. The secret is in reporting complete on the work performed. For that we'll take a look at daily coordination meetings.

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Mark Zweig writes an always-provocative column in the weekly newsletter The Zweig Letter. This week was no exception. Mark offers nine axioms — unifying characteristics — of the project-oriented firm:

There are no problems in this business that can't be addressed with enlightened managing, leading, and preparing.

• Clients are king.
• Internal initiatives take a back seat.
• HR problems WILL fester.
• The people who do well in the firm are those who seek out the attention and resources they need.
• No one can say for sure what comes first — the chicken or the egg, the project or the people who can do the project.
• Selling is easy if a client brings a problem or opportunity to the firm.
• Stars can be your greatest blessing and your greatest curse.
• You live and die by cash flow.
• Your worst clients and projects end up with your best people.

Mark titled his column The Problem with Project-Driven Businesses. I can't believe that Mark actually sees these nine items as problems. Mark is always writing about managing, leading, and preparing for the future of your business. You'll find the above "problems" when your not managing, leading, and preparing.

Are there "problems" with the project-driven business? The biggest problem is not recognizing that your firm is project-driven. A/E firms don't do one project at a time; they are multi-projects firms. A second problem is thinking that whatever "problems" you have are your problems alone. Mark and I visit with enough people in A/E to see the same symptoms over and over. For each axiom above there are a host of solution sets.

There are no problems in this business that can't be addressed with enlightened managing, leading, and preparing. Get to it!

Last week I proposed a set of meeting protocols for conducting projects on a lean basis. These protocols are used with the Last Planner System®. The first protocol is for the Look-Ahead Planning (LAP) meeting.

The point of the LAP meeting is to establish a plan that can be accomplished that closely matches what should be accomplished to meet the overall objectives of the project. I think of this meeting as the occasion for crafting or preparing the set of requests that will be made of the performers in the coming weeks. It is a meeting that the would-be performers attend. Those would-be performers look for the conditions of each up-coming task that would keep them from making a reliable promise at the time that a promise is needed. The lean project community calls those conditions constraints.

There are four objectives for the LAP meeting:

1. Establish the basis for weekly work planning — promising — in the coming week including identifying workable backlog.
2. To surface constraints.
3. To secure and manage the promises for removal of constraints.
4. To introduce the performers to the coming work.

A usual look-ahead plan has a six-week horizon. The meeting starts with a review of the coming week. Care is given to assess any remaining conditions (constraints) that would keep someone from making a reliable promise on the coming week's workplan. The project manager reviews any remaining constraints, the promises for removal, and then with the performers authorizes a set of requests for the coming week.

Next up is looking at week two on the LAP to see what work can be made available as workable backlog. The group evaluates what unconstrained work could be performed early if either a performer gets ahead or if there is some reason that would prevent the performer from doing the work as promised. The planning conversation ends by authorizing some subset of the second week's work as workable backlog. The group understands only the work authorized in the group conversation is to be workable backlog. This keeps people from doing work that could be out of sequence that would cause difficulty or rework for themselves or others.

The conversation then moves to a review of weeks three through five. There are two keys in this part of the meeting. The first is to review the completion of the promises for removing constraints. The second is to surface more constraints. The process of reviewing the coming work for six weeks has the effect of sharpening the group's attention. Invariably, no sooner has the group removed all the known constraints for a set of tasks than someone comes up with more constraints. During this conversation people are asked to make clear promises including completion dates for removing the constraints. People report complete on previous promises. The project manager updates the plan marking those tasks with no constraints "Ready for Promising".

Finally, the new sixth week of the plan is introduced to the group. For many of the performers they will be quite familiar with the new details because they were involved in establishing those plan details. The project manager highlights interactions of performers in the new work and asks them to identify constraints.

The meeting ends with a Plus-Delta (+Δ) — what produced value? and what might produce more value?

Depending on the complexity of the project and size of the project team these meetings can range anywhere from 30 minutes to 90 minutes.

Next up: the weekly work planning meeting…

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Keep your team ready to respond and adjust to the changing circumstances of the project by including them in regular planning conversations.

The Project Reformer's e-Tip of the Week

039: Prepare Your Team for Uncertainty

Project managers spend way too much time tweaking their plans — without guidance from the team — only to be faced with the inevitable oops!! There is a higher probability that things will accidentally go wrong in a project than that things will accidentally go right. Fundamentals of Project Management, James P. Lewis Planning is preparation for those who will be in action. We waste our time when we plan by ourselves. Have planning conversations. Engage your team — the project performers — in those conversations. Review the overall plan on a regular basis. Add details to later phases of your project as you go taking into consideration what really happened, what you've learned, changing client conditions of satisfaction, and the innovations that you've put in place. When you plan with your team they will be prepared to adjust to the inevitable uncertainty. Thanks go out to Dr. Gerry for reminding me of the quote. The Project Leaders' Studio™

©2004 Hal Macomber | RPM | e-Tip Archive | PDF | Submit Tip

Send me your proposals for Project e-Tips.

Tonight I speak at the Seattle chapter of the Project Management Institute (PMI) on the paper I co-authored with Greg Howell, Leadership and Project Management: Time for a Change from Fayol to Flores. A few months back when I was exploring what the talk would be about I had no idea that Stephen Covey had a book he would be publishing, let alone that he would tackle a subject as grand as greatness, The Eighth Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness.

I started this weblog 2½ years ago to explore what was working and not working in the field of delivering projects. I had no idea where that exploration would take me. Early this year I found myself writing about team member and team leader resignation, patterns of not speaking and not listening, and the pervasiveness of thinking that a plan can be put in place that others will be controlled to. Greg Howell and I wrote a second paper, Two Great Wastes in Organizations and Teams which together with the first was presented at the International Group for Lean Construction 12th Annual Conference in Denmark (IGLC-12). Along the way I began to notice others writing about my discomfort, Feudal Model for Project Management? Eventually, I prepared a concise posting for this weblog, Leave Behind Century-Old Management Theory. But with all my thinking, conversation, and writing, it's taken Stephen Covey to bring this into focus for me.

Covey calls the 8th habit (action): finding your voice and helping others find their voice. Covey says that in doing so we can move from effectiveness to greatness. For now, I will limit my thoughts to just being effective on our projects. I have yet to read the book; I will. Until then, I have two clear thoughts (for now) on what we must deal with to reach effectiveness.

• Interrupting My Resignation
  How is it that we are stuck with our resignation? What story do we keep telling ourselves about who we are in the world and who others are? Where did that story originate? What must I do to start telling a new story?
   
• Engage Committedly with Others
  All work on projects is for keeping some commitment to a client or customer. We call that work a project in part because it takes more than one person to fulfill that promise. We need a habit of making and securing reliable promises with other project participants. It is only through our collective committed actions that we will keep our promise to the client and leave ourselves in a condition to learn, to cope with changes, and to innovate.

We're long overdue for replacing Feudalism with an enlightened form of leadership and management. As Covey says, "Find your voice." Decide for yourself there's no reason for resignation. Speak. Listen. And create a habit of promising.

John L. Henshaw has resigned from his post at OSHA. The official announcement gives him credit for making our workplaces significantly safer over his tenure. That's true in total, but the situation is about the same for those of us in construction. In spite of all the efforts during the last 10 years, there is no change in worker death rates — about 1,200 workers die each year and many thousands are seriously injured.

I think the VPP (Voluntary Protection Plan) efforts will pay off. The program offers real incentives to firms who take the extra effort to qualify for the plan. Unfortunately, not enough firms will go after the VPP. Incremental improvement while desirable will not produce the results we need. It's time to come at this differently. In my mind there's no reason not to make the level of safety improvements MT Hojgaard, Denmark, accomplished when they adopted lean construction. They cut injury rates by about 60% in one year.

I want the new OSHA leader to make a commitment to cut injury rates by over 50% in the next two years. What do you want?

Read Safety Everyday's construction safety in the news sideblog.

Organizational change is one of the harder changes to make. It takes leadership, attention, and changes in routines. I prepared today's e-Tip for project managers and project executives who are introducing lean project delivery approaches.

The Project Reformer's e-Tip of the Week

038: Start Using a "To-Don't List"

Bosses listen up… How you spend your time matters far more than what you say when it comes to your staff or project team members. Are you holed up in your office or out where the work of the project happens? Do you stop when you walk a jobsite to fix a safety railing, pick up trash, and help someone struggling with a difficult task? Do you spend vastly more time asking questions or do you give direction? Make no mistake, your staff and your team notice how you spend your time. They watch so they can survive. It's that simple. Want to produce change? You need to give as much attention to what you choose not to do as you give to what you say is important. Focus. That's right, focus. Do one, maybe two things intensely for an extended period of time. I'm not saying the organization should stop doing everything else. No. I'm saying for you to stop doing everything else. Put all those other things on your "To-Don't List." That "To-Don't List" is a source to give your staff development opportunities. You can't bring about change if you haven't changed what you put on your calendar. Full stop. This Project e-Tip was inspired by Tom Peters' manifesto This I Believe appearing on ChangeThis! and in his booklet Project04: Snapshots of Excellence in Turbulent Times TIB# 48. For more on project leadership visit The Project Leaders' Studio™

©2004 Hal Macomber | RPM | e-Tip Archive | PDF | Submit Tip

Now, how about some e-Tip proposals from readers. I have pleny of great books that I'm ready to give out.

Meetings, meetings, meetings…we have far too many that don't produce the value for the attendees or the project. Patrick Lencioni's latest book, Death by Meeting, makes the case for different meeting approaches depending on the purpose pursued. For more than 8 years the founders of the Lean Construction Institute have advised people doing projects on a lean basis to have special-purpose weekly project meetings. Over the next week or so I will offer my proposals for protocols for conducting a series of meetings that address a coherent set of project concerns.

I have identified four five protocols that are consistent with the Last Planner System®. These five represent distinct phases of the workflow of project work. Read the rest of this entry ¶

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I feel stupid. Really stupid! How many times will it take before I learn the lesson that "90% of the population are honorary show-me Missourians?" as Tom Peters says in This I Believe TIB #20: He who makes the Quickest & Coolest Prototypes Reigns! I thought I learned that lesson…a long time ago. But my recent efforts to introduce design professionals (architects and engineers) to a different way of doing projects was met with great resistance.

Many people in the architecture and construction industry are exploring their discontent with the results of their projects. Greg Howell and I have been working quite successfully with project teams and companies introducing a different way to deliver projects. We decided that it was time to work intensively with a group of architects and engineers to explore two things as learning and innovation in action:

1. How much value can be created from adopting lean project practices in the A&E work settings?
2. What will it take to be successful in adopting a different approach in those settings?

Read the rest of this entry ¶

Can anyone upstage Tom Peters' kaizen Is…Very Dangerous Stuff? How about David Drickhamer? David has a different view on kaizen, Continuous Improvement — Crash, But Don't Burn, appearing in Industry Week.

People often cringe when I say, "Fail early and often." We work so hard to avoid failure, to encourage it seems counter to accepted wisdom. When I worked at The Neenan Company we called attention to our errors by banging on a Chinese gong in the main lobby of the building. Visitors thought we were crazy. Our subcontractors knew it to be true!

The road to process excellence and market success — and wisdom — is paved with failure.

So along comes David Drickhamer telling us to talk about our company and project failures. This is a guy who says if we don't speak about the failures we can't become great.

"What doesn't work — the major and minor failures — becomes the tacit knowledge and experience that builds up within individuals and organizations as they keep trying new things. Learning from past missteps, the next time they face a similar bottleneck, or a customer makes a similar request, these people and organizations are able to skip some of the trial and error to arrive at a solution faster."

I've learned that only the mature and wisest of managers and companies take advantage of failure. Politics, petty ambitions, and the fear of not looking good are the main enemies of an organization intent on learning, innovating, and staying competitive. David describes the usual situation:

"(W)hen the death knell begins to toll for really big projects, everybody who possibly can flees, separating themselves mentally and physically from the doomed venture."

Hey, Tom Peters. kaizen is not dangerous. Danger is an organization that doesn't systematically and continuously learn from its mistakes.