People, Process, and Tools
February 12th, 2006 by HalProjects @ Work 1 just finished a three-part series on People, Process, and Tools written by Alan S Koch. (You need a no-charge subscription to read the articles.) While Koch writes from the perspective of information technology projects his points apply equally well to other projects. These three articles offer a context for building your project organization including the systems you'll use on your project.
Koch says what all good project managers know but too often forget,
"People are indispensable, but not perfect…Effective processes enable our most precious resource — our people — to work their magic…Tools are the key to making our people more efficient and effective at executing the processes that support them"
One of my favorite lines from the third article is,
"We do not need a tool for every job."
Koch could have said the same for process. What we do need is to select people, process, and tools that match the challenges of our projects. We certainly don't want more processes or tools than our capable people need. And if you are going to err on having more or fewer people than the project needs, then err on the side of more. Why? You can't improve anything without some slack capacity. Whether or not you plan to do your projects on a lean basis, you'll need enough extra capacity for people to respond to the inevitable surprises and to participate in continuous improvement activities.
Have a look at the articles then take a look at your current project. Do you have the people, process, and tools you need to succeed? If not, then make changes.
- Hal is on the Editorial Board of ProjectsAtWork. [ ⇑ back ]
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February 14th, 2006 at 10:00 am
Hal, This post is off-topic, but it is important to note, as it pertains to the registration requirement for Projects @ Work. As an editorial board member for Projects @ Work, I thought you might be interested in it. I don’t use the Projects@Work website any more because of their user agreement. Particularly, it is this clause:
By uploading materials to any Forum or submitting materials to Projects @ Work, you automatically grant (or warrant that the owner of such rights has expressly granted) Projects @ Work, whether in your name or not, a perpetual, royalty-free, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, sublicense, transfer and distribute such materials or incorporate such materials in any form, medium or technology now known or later developed throughout the universe. In addition, you warrant that so-called “moral rights” in those materials have been waived.
This is a particularly limiting clause and I cannot give my consent to this use of my potential contributions to the Projects @ Work community. I hope you can get it changed!
Mike