Archive for the 'commentary' Category

After a handful of reader comments and another handful of reader emails I've decided I need to comment further on Wednesday's posting Innovation and Lean Go Hand-in-Glove. I wrote it in response to Joyce Wycoff's Do Less, Have More appearing in her weblog Good Morning Thinkers! Joyce argued for more slack time so people have time to be innovative saying that companies focus on "sucking out all the fat" so they are left with a "lean machine" eliminates the time to be innovative. I commented that lean initiatives create slack time. Each reader essentially has the same thing to say to me. I've included the text of one of those emails followed by my response.

  >
  > You and Joyce Wycoff are talking two different things. When a company
  > goes "lean," they often take out too many employees "because they are
  > going to work smarter." The thing that happens is the work is not
  > analyzed for best procedures and risks, so the remaining employees are left to
  > carry an extra work load and have no time to think or act proactively.
  > You, on the other hand, are talking about solving problems before
  > removing employees — and no where did you indicate removing employees is
  > necessarily part of the plan. What you could be removing is time, or
  > waste, or effort.
  >

One way of seeing the situation is that Joyce and I are talking two different things. However the risk is that most people will not see that. When we communicate there is always the denotative meaning, the connotative meanings, and the oh-so numerous misunderstandings. Those misunderstandings have numerous sources. Here are two. The first is a blindness to the denotative meaning in the choice of words used. The second is a blindness to the listeners' knowledge of denotative meaning. As David Schmaltz points out in his comment to my posting there is a growing understanding of lean to be mean. It is that definition that Joyce conveys. It is unfortunate. I encounter one person after another that has objections to lean initiatives because they anticipate mean consequences. I've traced this back to Chain-Saw Al Dunlop's driving Sunbeam into the ground under the banner of lean. We have to change this. We can't let anyone think that Joyce and I are writing about the same thing. Lean has a very specific meaning that everyone in business must know to be successful.

The lean approach has separated Dell from everyone else in their industry. Dell is able to invest in new US factories at a time where others are off-shoring. The lean approach allows Toyota to build cars in each of the markets they serve rather than exporting from Japan. The lean approach is responsible for an Ohio general contractor expanding in a very competitive and scarce market these last two years while other firms struggle for their existence. A hallmark of all three firms is how they've systematically tapped the everyday-always inventiveness of their people. Invest in Dell and Toyota. They will continue to thrive as will other firms who take a lean approach. Too bad you can't invest in the Ohio GC. It's a 100% employee owned firm.

I have my own take on why innovation is stifled. It has to do with the Two Great Wastes: not listening and not speaking. But that's for another time…

So thank you Joyce for continuing to write on innovation. I'll keep visiting your weblog Good Morning Thinkers!. And thank you everyone who wrote comments and emails. You've given me the opportunity to sharpen our understanding of lean.

Joyce Wycoff suggests that one of the reasons companies aren't more innovative is they have become so lean they don't have the time for thinking, Good Morning Thinkers!: Do Less, Have More. I've found the exact opposite to be true. Taking a lean approach to projects frees up time that otherwise is spent addressing what should have happened yesterday, but didn't. Reliability in your processes and results makes time available for team members to improve and innovate in their work. That in turn makes the project more lean generating even more time for thinking and innovation.

I think I'll write a book. I've been looking over the best-sellers. The big hits have one thing in common. Their titles all start with a number. The author follows that number with a few words to convey that he or she has the secret. For just $19.95 you can have the secret too! I've picked 10 of the most popular number-titles to illustrate the extent of the wisdom packed inside.

Life is never so simple that success can be described by a single-digit list

• 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, by Steven Covey
3. Put first things first
7. Sharpening the saw
• 10 Things that Keep CEOs Awake, by Elizabeth Coffey
2. Developing bifocal vision
10. Balancing your act
• 11 Keys to Leadership, by Dayle M. Smith
3. Develop a dynamic belief system
10. Nurture effective channels of information
• 12 Simple Secrets of Happiness, by Glenn Van Ekeren
7. Forgiveness: Keeping bridges in good repair
12. Gratitude: Show it!
• 17 Essential Qualities of a Team Player, by John C. Maxwell
8. Enlarging: adding value to teammates in invaluable
15. Selfless: there is no "I" in team
• 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork, by John C. Maxwell
2. Big Picture: The goal is more important than the role
14. Communication: Interaction fuels action
• 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader, by John C. Maxwell
1. Character: Be a piece of the rock
19. Servanthood
• 21 Most Powerful Minutes in a Leader's Day, by John C. Maxwell
4. Navigation: Anyone can steer the ship, but it takes a leader to chart the course.
18. Sacrifice: A leader must give up to go up
• 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, by Al and Laura Ries
11. Fellowship: A brand should welcome other brands
21. Mortality: No brand will live forever. Euthanasia is often the best solution.
• 50 Things that Really Matter (no author)
6. Bubble baths
42. A good cup of coffee

I want to start my book with a number others haven't taken. I'm thinking 37. There are many reasons to love 37: It's prime. It's a two-digit number; life is never so simple that success can be described by a single-digit list. The digits add to ten. Next, I'll need to pick a grabbing qualifier.

The "I"s have it in the above titles. I've selected INARGUABLE. It might help to keep the hecklers away. Now for the rest of the title. While I know something about leadership, there's just way too many leadership books available today — 93,851 titles on Amazon earlier this month. The subject I know the most about is projects. But I'm looking for a new audience. I've narrowed it down to vacations — 67,695 Amazon results, or to player pianos — just 1,523 Amazon results. I like to take vacations so I'm probably as qualified to write on that subject as any of the above authors. I don't own a player piano, but I'd like to one day. And the market for books is not crowded. I've made up my mind. My book will be titled The 37 Inarguable Uses for Player Pianos. It's got best-seller written all over it.

In case you're wondering, I don't own all the above books. I subscribe to Business Books Summaries. Each week I get a new book summary in PDF format by email. Each summary is 7 - 12 pages long — just the right length for all that numerical wisdom.

The August 8, 2004, Sunday Edition of the New York Times ran a story Building a Bad Reputation: Sloppy American Construction, Julie V. Iovine. The story appeared in the Arts and Design section. [You'll need to move fast to read the article. The NYT only makes their stories available for about 1 week. If you haven't registered with the site, then you'll have to do that before viewing.]

This story will make its way around the AEC and real estate industries. Ms. Iovine is saying publicly what many architects have been saying about contractors and the subcontractor workforce for years.

"Got a gaping one-inch space between frame and window? Just fill it in with silicone and call it a day. Not perfectly flush or plumb? Who cares!"

But she doesn't stop there. She's also saying what contractors have been saying about architects.

"(T)he architect's reputation for meticulous standards was so daunting that some 50 contractors had refused to bid on the job."

Is our industry broken? Do we have a bad reputation among foreign designers? While it may be an exception, some people in the industry are up for the challenge.

"At first there was this big fear that the kind of quality possible in Japan was impossible here. Some of us took that as a challenge to achieve the equivalent level of craftsmanship."

There is something foreign designers value about the American way.

"The team spirit in the U.S. is exceptional. Once they are in front of a challenge, they rise to it. It was a pure American effort."

I suspect poor quality persists due to the way we manage.

Here's what I make of the situation. In the U.S.A. we do not have a value for and practice of learning and innovating on the jobsite. Too often we buy out the job by awarding pieces to subcontractors on a lowest price basis. Those subcontractors hire other specialist subcontractors each offering their lowest price. We do this in an attempt to optimize the cost of the job. Instead, we get sub-optimization of systems and the project as a whole. Further, we bring strangers together and make no effort to build relationships. Why bother? Labor is labor? We can replace one person with another without negative consequences to the job. And that's where we are wrong.

We can make concrete that has "the airless density of a flourless chocolate cake." We can form that concrete so the finish can be polished. And we even can design, fabricate, and install curtain wall systems to tight tolerances. But we can't do any of that reliably without fundamentally changing what we value from our construction activities. And that goes for the architects too. They must bring construction folk into the earliest stages of design if they want a design that is constructable to their intentions.

I see the lean approach transforming the AEC industry.

I suspect poor quality persists due to the way we manage. The story of Toyota's entry to the U.S.A. is instructive. Toyota took GM's worst plant in Freemont, CA, where there were reported to be more worker grievances than in the rest of GM combined. That plant is also where they had low quality and high recalls. Giving up, GM closed the plant. Toyota came in and hired back a large group of the workforce but not the management. Instead, Toyota infused the workforce with the Toyota DNA. Then together management and workers designed the plant operations. The Corollas that come off that line are equally good as those from Japan.

Ms. Iovine interviewed Dana Buntrock, author of "Japanese Architecture as a Collaborative Process". Ms. Buntrock, just up the road from Toyota, said quality is tied to wealth. But she's changing her mind.

"Now I am beginning to wonder if well-built architecture occurs only at a very fragile economic moment. You need not only affluence, but a group of people who are well paid enough to remain in the crafts and building trades even though they are intelligent, and you need the overall size of an architectural project to remain relatively small."

I'm more optimistic than Ms. Buntrock. Just as the lean approach has made Toyota a powerhouse and competitors their imitators, I see the lean approach transforming the AEC industry. And it is well on its way in northern California, just a few miles from Toyota's Freemont facility. Read the August 7, 2004 story appearing in the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal Sutter Health Tells It's Builders, "Make It Lean".

David Drickhamer writes a monthly commentary for Industry week on the topic of continuous improvement. His articles are enlightening and entertaining. While Drickhamer writes about manufacturing I always find a lesson for doing projects. His latest article didn't disappoint, The Next Manufacturing Craze.

Drickhamer points fun at how people make fads out of just good practice.

Set yourself up to be a guru; get yourself a few devotees; write a book every two years; write a weblog; and give it all a catchy name mixing a Japanese word with old-European tradition. It'll be the next big thing in operations excellence.

I'll need a new model of excellence. Everyone's sick of hearing about Toyota.

It's too bad "everyone" hasn't learned from Toyota. With our attention on the next big thing competitors will never catch Toyota. Thanks David for catching us being ourselves!

Read Business 2.0 if you are interested in great business journalism. The latest issue describes the Toyota Production System (TPS) effect on industry. Toyota Retools Japan is reason enough to spend the $4.95 for unlimited access to the site. Don't take my word for it. Check out the latest issue. You'll need the newsstand access code 'B2AUG1099′.

The Toyota Production System has legs. I've been writing about the influence TPS is having on the delivery of projects. The bigger story is how Toyota executives are remaking one industry after another in Japan.

(C)ompanies mimicking Toyota are going about things in a new way. In the past, TPS projects were typically led by middle managers whose resumes did not include stints with Japan's largest auto maker. Commitment from senior management tended to be lukewarm at best. Now that consulting and job switching are more common in Japan, however, Toyota veterans are available to lead the change.

There's nothing new in the description of the approach. Visibility management (5S) coupled with demand-driven production management and continuous improvement are turning in stellar results. But just as in the past, people continue to misunderstand the strength of the TPS. At the root, the TPS is a coherent set of principles for creating highly effective processes in any industry.

Read the article. Read the HBR article Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System, by Spear and Bowen. Read Lean Thinking, by Womack and Jones. Then, get started redesigning you processes and your projects.

After OSHA concluded that Linda Moeves', owner of Moeves Plumbing, willful inherent disregard of safe work practices led to the death of 22 year-old Patrick E. Walters when he was buried alive in the cave-in of a trench, OSHA then negotiated away the willful designation, reduced the fine, and set-back safe work practices in the process. The New York Times thankfully has taken up the cause. In the first of three articles in the series When Workers Die, David Barstow reveals the collusion and ineptitude of the federal agency chartered to protect workers from unscrupulous and irresponsible actions of employers. You must read this article and return each day for the following two articles.

The article describes the inspectors' actions to bring about training and safe practices at Moeves Plumbing. I don't understand what training is necessary. The information is readily available and understandable to all in OSHA's Construction Industry Digest. Here's the relevant text from pages 26 and 27:

Each employee in an excavation shall be protected from cave-ins by an adequate protective system except when:

• Excavations are made entirely in stable rock, or excavations are less than 5 feet (1.5 meters) in depth and examination of the ground by a competent person provides no indication of a potential cave-in. 1926.652(a)(1)(i) through (ii)
• Protective systems shall have the capacity to resist, without failure, all loads that are intended or could reasonably be expected to be applied or transmitted to the system. 1926.652(a)(2)

Employees shall be protected from excavated or other materials or equipment that could pose a
hazard by falling or rolling into excavations. Protection shall be provided by placing and
keeping such materials or equipment at least 2 feet (0.6 meters) from the edge of excavations,
or by the use of retaining devices that are sufficient to prevent materials or equipment from
falling or rolling into excavations, or by a combination of both if necessary. 1926.651(j)(2)

Daily inspections of excavations, the adjacent areas, and protective systems shall be made by a competent person for evidence of a situation that could result in possible cave-ins, indications of failure of protective systems, hazardous atmospheres, or other hazardous conditions. An inspection shall be conducted by the competent person prior to the start of work and as needed throughout the shift. Inspections shall also be made after every rainstorm or other hazard increasing occurrence. These inspections are only required when employee exposure can be reasonably anticipated. 1926.651(k)(1)

Where a competent person finds evidence of a situation that could result in a possible cave-in, indications of failure of protective systems, hazardous atmospheres, or other hazardous
conditions, exposed employees shall be removed from the hazardous area until the necessary
precautions have been taken to ensure their safety. 1926.651(k)(2)

A stairway, ladder, ramp, or other safe means of egress shall be located in trench excavations that are 4 feet (1.2 meters) or more in depth so as to require no more than 25 feet (7.6 meters) of lateral travel for employees. 1926.651(c)(2)

Patrick E. Walters did not have to die. Nor do over 1,200 other people who die in construction-related incidents each year. Swift prosecution is the only thing that will have company managers take their responsibilities seriously. OSHA knows that and doesn't do it.

In a page from OSHA's website OSHA Saves Lives they describe an incident just like Patrick Walters. They make no mention of levying fines.

"Get out of that trench," OSHA Inspector Robert Dickinson ordered a worker in an unshored, unsloped, unsafe trench by the side of the road near El Paso, Texas. Good thing El Paso Assistant Area Director Mario Solano had spotted the trench earlier on September 13, 2001 and sent Dickinson and Elias Casillas to check it out. Because 30 seconds after the employee left the trench, the wall near where he had been standing collapsed. Heeding the compliance officer's warning and order to leave the trench kept the worker from experiencing a serious, perhaps life-threatening injury.

It read's like OSHA believes it's own PR. OSHA inspectors are not there to prevent an injury. They are there to see that systems and practices are in place for preventing all injuries. Nothing has changed just look at the numbers: 2002 (1,121), 2001 (1,225), 2000 (1,155), 1999 (1,191), 1995-1999 Avg (1,115) (collected from US BLS 2000, US BLS 2001, US BLS 2002).

Please join David Barstow and the New York Times bring about a reform at OSHA. Link to the article. Link to this posting. Write Russell B. Swanson, OSHA's Director of Construction, at bswanson@dol.gov, John L. Henshaw, Assistant Secretary of Labor OSHA, at this form, or Elaine Chao, Secretary of Labor at this form. And write members of congress.

You gotta be asking what is he doing now? Well, I'm participating in an experiment in concurrent blogging. Bloggers all over are writing today on the subject of the "brand". The idea is to see what new is created when we all blog intentionally rather than just top-of-mind. To find other postings search on the prepend to the title [grid::brand]. It will take a day or so for Google to catch up with all the postings, but it should be interesting. Or visit: the grid brand channel.

I've been curious about the traditional airlines' entry into the discount market. For years Southwest, Frontier, ATA, Air Tran, and now Jet Blue have been cherry-picking profitable routes and flying without the expense of large hubs. They've also been able to attract personnel at below the rates at the major airlines. So why does the public like these upstarts? Price is at the top of the list, but that can't account for all of the market. These carriers have staked out a brand. The combination of great pricing and a strong brand make them unbeatable. Or is that the case?

In the last year we've seen the launch of three new services all in competition with the upstarts. It started with Tango. Air Canada is a monopoly for point-to-point travel within Canada. They had been challenged by some entrepreneurial endeavors mimicking what Southwest was doing in the US. Their response was to create a discount brand using the same systems as Air Canada but branding it differently. It's hard to say what their success is. I have tried flying on Tango but the flights are limited. Even with 14 day advance purchase I couldn't get a flight. I went online just yesterday looking for a flight from Toronto to Vancouver and they were all sold out. Is that success? Maybe. But I was disappointed.

Air Canada is not doing much to identify Tango as its own entity. Once I started my flight reservations I was directed to an Air Canada page. Then I couldn't get back to Tango without typing the URL again. People don't know about Tango, and I predict it will stay that way.

Delta has responded to Jet Blue, et al, with Song. Fast Company profiled the Song start-up over the summer. It's a great story of project leadership. Throughout the start-up they put a premium on new ideas. Of course you can't predict when a new idea will obsolete your plan. So the start-up team was quick to adjust their plans on-the-fly. The new airline will be everything that Delta is not. Fun, full-featured cabins, and competitive with Jet Blue. The web experience is consistent. Unlike Tango, when you book a flight with Song you stay on a Song site. Nice. These folks just might have a chance.

Now I get to Ted, as in Uni-Ted. A banner on the United site shows the Ted website as flyted.com. No go. When I clicked on the banner it took me to the United travel planning site. Looks like this new brand of theirs is just another line extension. They don't take to the air 'til February.

Ted appears to be a reincarnation of Shuttle by United, the money-losing service that operated in California. They will operate a budget oriented service for vacationers. This offshoot airline will operate from DIA serving the southwest market. Looks like a Southwest attack to me. Anyone want to bet who'll be the winner: the profitable Phoenix carrier or the offshoot rising from DIA? Even if United does a great job with the project to launch the new airline, it's going head-to-head with a deep-pocket operator who owns the low-priced market. Further, Southwest is THE brand that others emulate. It may not matter how good Ted is. Southwest has the market.

So does this have anything to do with projects and leadership? You bet! Each one of these airline launches is a complicated project. Usual project practices would have people planning these out to the nth degree at the very start. Only Song seems to get the nature of their project. They have set up a process to improvise as they go. That can only help as they get this new brand off the ground. It seems to me that good brands are all about doing one successful project after the other. Let's see if these airlines have it in them.

Being Saturday, I thought I'd offer something different. As regular readers of weblogs know bloggers link to other bloggers. It makes the experience of reading a blog so interesting. When I visit a blog I do so wondering "where will I go today?" Blogs like mine have a topical focus. You can read all sorts of things about project management, but you won't be reading about Brittany. (It is possible to escape the pop culture.) Most links on my pages will take you to other useful perspectives having some relationship (in my mind, anyway) to the topic of reforming PM. The linking of all these postings through time presents an evolving consciousness and body of knowledge.

Hold onto your chairs. You are about to witness an explosion in both the connectedness and production or presentation of knowledge. How? Through grid blogging. Instead of a few of us blogging on the same topics from one week to the next, Ashley Benigno has proposed that a whole bunch of us blog on a single topic for a day. That first topic is the "brand".

While we don't know what to expect or how many people will get involved, there are some models for this behavior. On these pages and in their respective weblogs, Frank, Joe, and I blogged on the Theory of Constraints for a week in Down 'n Dirty with the Theory of Constraints. Like this proposed effort we knew a week or so in advance what we would do. We also shared our postings with each other before we posted so we would do a good job introducing the topic. Not only did the three of us learn, but we had very high readership for the week and shortly thereafter. Something similar happens each year on World AIDS Day where bloggers post their thoughts. See www.linkandthink.org.

I am so excited about this. While the topic of the "brand" is interesting to me, what I'm more interested in is the possibility of extending what we know and can do by being focused like this. It should be great for those writing as well as those just reading.

Mark your calendar: Grid Blogging the "Brand" on December 1, 2003. I'll be joining in. How about you?

I am really embarrassed. Over a year ago I added the Atomz search tool to my weblog and website. I've tried it a couple of times and was disappointed I couldn't find what I had written. Today I decided to dig in. I found I was not including my own weblog in the target for the searches. Aargh!

I apologize to all of you using the search tool. Just one more example of there's too much to know. Try it. You'll find the search tool in the left-hand column part way down the page and on the archives page.

This article was written by Michael Sheerin, P.E., Healthcare Division Director TLC Engineering for Architecture, Orlando, Trust Is Crucial in Project Coordination.

Sheerin opens his article this way:

The key ingredient of any successful project is trust: the owner must trust the building team to envision and create the owner's goals; designers must trust the contractor's ability to work within the framework of construction documents to build a living environment; the contractor must trust that the design team has developed a plan comprehensive enough to get them all out of the jungle without too many snake bites.

Great start, unfortunately, there is no more. He has the right idea, but doesn't offer insight into how to do it.

Certainly, the best method for keeping on track throughout the course of a project is communication � the unambiguous, respectful, formal kind as well as the inquiring, personable, informal kind.

He goes on to speak about compromise in the coordination of design documents:

…every coordinating agent should seek to balance the competing interests of all of the design and construction team members to achieve ownership � and acceptance � of sometimes difficult decisions.

He shows his cynical side here:

(A) contractor may take some satisfaction in button-holing a designer for some area of flawed thinking. In the face of concrete dimensional data, designers must drop their egos at the door.

Aargh! I can't go on.

Right title…no understanding of trust. Trust is nurtured and preserved on teams. It starts as compound assessments of each other's competence, reliability, care for the other, and sincerity. Once we spend enough time with each other, trust can be elevated to a central component of a relationship. The problem on projects in the AEC world is we start out as strangers and too often end the project that way. [Strangers, Friends, and Partners]

Yes, trust is crucial in project coordination, just as it is important in all project endeavors. Leaders have the greatest opportunity for intervening where trust is insufficient for the task at hand. The rest of us have the responsibility to see that our leaders do just that.

Harvard Business Review, Sept 2003, leads with a case study on blogger behavior at work. The case is kinda fun. A woman writing a blog calling herself "Glove Girl" is responsible for a big increase in the sale of the company's products, but she blogs without permission, and without following the company line. (Imagine that.) What is the CEO to do? [smirk]

As usual, HBR invites four 'experts' to offer their views on what to do. The advice is not bad. It ranges from figure out how to take this blog-marketing thing mainstream to what's wrong with the way you communicate internally that you didn't know Glove Girl was blogging.

Here are my comments:
(I used to be a Chief Operating Officer for a design-build commercial builder.)

• Create mechanisms for employees to engage fully in the mission of the company. Some people are just dying to make bigger contributions. Blogging is just one way to share ones voice.
• Blog with company bloggers. Ray Ozzie founder of Groove took up blogging and discovered his own voice along the way. (If you can't beat 'em, join 'em?) Learn first-hand how the blogging medium (genre) can support the company mission.
• Encourage group blogging. As companies become more and more virtual (physically separate) we risk becoming detached from our peers. A group blog, where each of us can post, read, and comment as it serves us and the group, nurtures relationships. Group blogging may be the safety net for distributed project teams.
• Bring the marketing department together with the company bloggers. Prepare yourself to mediate the conversation! My experience of bloggers is they are VERY well-intended. Help people find ways to create something new from an intentionality between the groups.
• Look for other 'marginal practices' that may be contributing to the success of the company. Instant messaging for supporting clients immediately comes to mind. Wikis for supporting the folks who are supporting the customers? How about unsanctioned websites?

Creating a blogging presence was too easy. It took me all of 3 hours on a weekend. Just imagine what is happening at work with all the 'friendly support' available! Don't wait…harness it.

So claims David Schmaltz in his book The Blind Men and the Elephant, Mastering Project Work. Those are words only a self-described heretic could utter. The key word is "thing". While we speak of projects as nouns, the experience of a project is much more like a verb.

I won't make this a book review. Instead, I'll just share a few moving passages. Perhaps that will get you to buy this book. Get extra copies to share with you boss and your project team mates.

He identifies six characteristics of project communities who become coherent:

1. They are composed of acknowledged blind men.
2. They share an indescribable elephant.
3. They also share (or have shared) a frustrating experience.
4. They show some patience in the face of their frustration — they stick with it.
5. They make generous interpretations of others' perspectives.
6. Some, although by no means all, also adopt a coherent organization structure; they circle up and focus upon a common point.

We could discuss each point as a posting. Instead, take a look at how he wraps this essay.

People create a common rhythm together, not unmanageable chaos. Project an alluring future, and people cohere. They might battle endlessly over differing theories about how to get there, like our blind men around their elephant, but it's there theologies that are in dispute, not their objectives. Their individual passion binds them to their commonality.

David Schmaltz goes on to claim that we know all we need to know to be good project team members. "We are each expert at being human." Let's bring that human-ness back to the center of our project work. Maybe then we will experience the thing…that wonder of projects.

While this is a blog about project management, I thought a few points about blogging might be useful to the readers. Dave Winer, one of the founders of the blogging phenomenon, has recently left his position at Scripting News and joined the faculty at Harvard. His writing on blogging has always been good. His latest piece describing the elements of a weblog is excellent, What makes a weblog a weblog?

I encourage you to read Dave's essay. It may provide you with a broader perspective on what I am up to with this weblog. While you're on his page take a look at two other articles: Business Is Toying With a Web Tool, by Amy Cortese, New York Times and What We Do When We Blog, by Meg Hourihan, co-founder of Blogger and co-author of We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs.

Well, my whining has worked. Two readers submitted proposals for Project e-Tips. I accepted both and they selected Purple Cow as their reward. Look for their e-Tips in the next two weeks. I still have 3 more copies of Seth Godin's Purple Cow and 5 full-year subscriptions to Business Book Summaries (a $99 value). Get me your proposal while you still have a choice!

I received numerous replies to the posting Can the Reform of Project Management Succeed? Most were encouraging. Many came by email; while others were the topic of Yahoo! Group discussions. Here are ten of the best quotes:

• I think the project management theory is dated…(I) am a big fan of controlling variability Kalyan
• PM sometimes just has to be "enforced" from the top down. Buck
• If you ask for different reporting and you don't create jobs for traditional PMs and you don't hire any, you have a paradigm shift. David
• In an agile world, the PM's job is to keep the Issue Log empty, not draw the Gantt Chart. Ken
• I actually believe that this decade is when the entire project management paradigm is going to undergo a paradigm shift. Kalyan
• The theory & practice of project management IS stuck in a rut but that's not because of a lack of effort…No, it is mostly because project managers are sticking to an outdated technique. Namely GANTT chart style project planning. Chris
• Do we need to produce a change in project management? Or do we simply need to produce a change in the projects we manage?…If those of us who are passionate about eliminating waste in systems keep learning and sharing, we'll have impact on those projects we touch. Joe
• Tariq offered "these OLD quotes":
  • Every time material is handled , something is added to it's cost, yet not to it's value. - Henry Royce, 1907
  • It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change. - Charles Darwin
  • When the learner is ready, the teacher will come. - Taiichi Ohno
  • We don't have to change; survival isn't mandatory. - W. Edwards Deming
  • Real benefits come when managers begin to understand the profound difference between "cost cutting" and "eliminating the causes" of costs. Brian L. Joiner
• The schedule, which used to be the assumed management tool, is a path only marked in the distance now. At best it has always been a guess as to the steps needed. Steve
• The PMI will disappear unless its members embrace progressive paradigms. Marton

Long live the reform!