Trenching deaths and injuries are in the news almost every week. (Take a look at the Safety Everyday Sideblog for recent stories.) OSHA recently responded with a Safety Tips Card: Safety in Excavations or Trenches. It is available in English and Spanish.

Trenches must meet at least one of the following conditions:

• Sloped for stability
• Cut to create stepped or benched grades
• Supported by a system made with posts, beams, shores or planking and hydraulic jacks
• Supported by a trench box
• An exit ladder must be within 25 feet of workers extending 3 feet out of the trench

See that your project meets these conditions. Don't ever go into a trench that isn't prepared appropriately. Print the above card and give one to everyone on your job. And for another take on how to address trench safety read Trench Warfare — Time to Get Serious about Planning.

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

When talking about lean this and lean that, so much attention is given to the tools — 7 wastes, kanban, kaizen, kaikaku, SMED, etc. — rather than the tool users. John Seddon cautions us to Watch Out for the Toolheads. John makes his living helping service companies adopt lean practices. While the general idea of lean travels easily among many industries, the methods of lean production don't. John provides an approach that can make your service company lean. He calls it The Vanguard Method.

The purpose of lean is to increase capacity by designing a system that optimally responds to customer demand.

John does a wonderful job describing what it means to be lean and how production and services are different. He does not go into projects. However, you won't find a better primer on lean than John's article Watch Out for the Toolheads. This article is a keeper. He goes to great extent to describe what is lean and what is not lean.

I haven't read a more concise and informative document to introduce you to the basics of the lean approach. You'll learn about fail-safing, just-in-time, 5S (visual management), and the history of lean. Don't hesitate. Get your own copy now.

Effern, one of my readers, has been writing a weblog titled The Vision Thing on the topics of business, process, and management. Effern interviewed three project management bloggers, Johanna Rothman: Managing Product Development, Clarke Ching: I Think Not, Baby Puppy, and me for a podcast series he calls The Sound of Vision.

With all my travel last week I was just able to connect to listen to the podcast. Effern interviewed us separately then patched together a program. I am quite surprised how well it came out. Each of us spoke for about 20 mins on our perspective of project management. You'll find three complementary approaches. Have a listen — put a voice to the online ramblings — then get over to each of the weblogs.

A heavy travel schedule this week provided the opportunity to catch up on loads of reading. Baseline Magazine is a monthly that focuses on IT projects and issues. Executive editor John McCormick wrote Projects Don't Fail, People Do. He says we only need to look to Occam's razor for the answer. Huh? That's what I said. McCormick explains it this way:

"The rule known in scientific and philosophical circles as Occam's razor stipulates that when multiple theories are available to explain a problem, the simplest one is preferred."

Projects don't fail; the people who manage project managers fail.

He uses Occam's razor to answer the question, "Why do projects fail?" He refers to a series of government studies of project failures to conclude that everywhere there is a failure people are at the cause of the failure. He cites:

• Project managers are unprepared for their role.
• Project managers are not professionally trained.
• Project managers don't manage what they are doing.

The general thinking is project management training and certification will go a long way to correcting this. Maybe. I fully agree that people fail not projects. I've stopped looking at the project manager. Why is it we put people in roles for which they are unqualified? Why are we not training our staff? And, what are we doing that we don't notice when project managers are not managing? The simple answer is those who manage and lead project managers are not doing their job.

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Fredrik Wacka writing in Webpro News Using Blogs for Project Management says the time is here for project weblogs.

"Project blogs integrated into an intranet will, I believe, prove to be one of the most valuable types of corporate blogging."

Fredrik is a regular writer on blogging. Not only is he suggesting that project champions blog he advocates Why Corporate Boards Should Blog. I've been writing a weblog now for 2½ years. I also work with project teams across the AEC industry. Maybe other projects are ready for this. The AEC environment is not ready. For the most part, project participants have neither the time or the inclination for reading or writing this sort of thing. Sure project teams would benefit tremendously from more story-telling about the project. But for now, I can't see recommending it to anyone and I wrote a specification for a project weblog.

Are you interested in spectatcular team results?

"Would a 36 percent reduction in unit cost interest your management? How about a 40 percent improvement in productivity, or a reduction of cycle time from 55 days to 1 day, resulting in a savings of $1 million? These are all actual figures from the 2004 final round of competition at the International Team Excellence Awards event.

Cathy Webber says all that is possible in her article for last week's edition of Projects @ Work*, Making Collaboration Work. Ms. Webber says the difficulty with collaboration is a function of poor leadership.

"Leaders do a poor job of creating an open, inclusive, inspiring, supportive, and motivating environment where collaborative project teams can flourish."

What can we do to help them, help us?

Ms. Webber says the results are available when leaders do the following:

• Define A Team-Project Framework
• Use Collaborative Technologies
• Create Team Champions
• Include All Stakeholders
• Reward Teams

But don't wait for leaders to take those actions. Help leaders help us.

Take some time to read Cathy Webber's article. Then, share it with your team. You might need their help.

* Disclosure: I accepted an invitation to join the editorial board of Projects @ Work.

Software plans often lack common sense (and a) user focus

eWeek reports the FBI is likely to scrap their $170 million Virtual Case File software project. It's not the first big software project to fail, nor will it be the last. What I find interesting is the explantation offered by Eric Lundquist, editor-in-chief of eWeek, in the January 31, 2005 issue. Lundquist speculates (he says he doesn't have first-hand details) it is the compound effects of "too much turnover at the top management levels, too many promises of what the software would be capable of doing, and too little contact with the people who would use the software of a day-to-day basis. He sums it up as, "Software plans often lack common sense (and a) user focus.

We need a new common sense for developing and delivering projects of all types. I'll echo Lundquists speculations and I'll add a few of my own. Projects run well when the planning and execution are tightly coupled in a way that adapts to what the team is learning, innovating, and encountering. Call it agile or call it lean; either way, put the people performing on the project at the center of your concern when managing it.

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OSHA is cracking down on residential contractors. After employees complained to OSHA about unsafe work conditions the hammer came down, Nine New York Contractors Face $98,400 in Fines After OSHA Sweep. Antonio Pietroluongo, OSHA's acting Manhattan area director commented,

"It's particularly disturbing to see many of the same hazards at three different jobsites overseen by the same general contractor. Left uncorrected, these conditions expose employees to potential serious injury or death from falls, electrocution, scaffold collapse, gas cylinder explosions or head injuries."

Scaffolding and fall protection are two of the leading issues in the industry. There is no excuse for anyone putting themselves or others at risk on projects. Let's make sure we all go home to our families every night.

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

Mark Mullaly writing in GanttHead suggests that project management becoming a profession may not be what we really want, Brave New World (Part 1). He outlines the additional responsibilities — professional liability — along with a shift in authority that would be required. How many of us think we have the authority we need to do our jobs? How many think that will change? He further introduces the likelihood of regulation. (Sarbanes-Oxley all over again!)

I'm sticking with the status quo. Although, I have joined the PMI and I will take the PMP exam. There's real value in becoming more professional even if we don't become a profession.

The various project worlds can learn from each other. While designing and constructing buildings is different from designing and coding software, planning and managing the projects is often more alike than not. In Johanna Rothman's post Invest in the Design of Your Project Every Day, she encourages us to be ready to change the plan each day.

We've all see the phenomenon that as soon as you've scheduled the project, the schedule is out of date. If you plan to invest in replanning and rescheduling, that doesn't matter.

Note: Johanna is not saying change your goals or your overall promise to the customer. She's also not encouraging that we make changes in a vacuum. The key is to be responsible…to your customer, to other members of the team, and to yourself.

One-time planning can't anticipate ALL of what we must deal with to succeed with our projects. Neither will solo-planning. So, do as Johanna suggests, build-in regular cycles for replanning, and do it collaboratively.