Reforming Project Management » innovation

Friction-Free Collaboration

Hal — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 20:34:03 +0000

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I've just arrived at the PMI Global Congress 2009 in Orlando, FL. Tomorrow AM a number of us who are members of the PMI New Media Council will be speaking in a panel on social media and its impacts on the discipline of project management. Among other things, I'll be talking about my company's experience using Yammer. Our experience has been good. More on that later.

It's great seeing a smiling colleague's faceOur company works with architects, engineers and construction firms along with the clients of those firms. We're a small consultancy…just 12 people all working out of their homes in all 4 US continental timezones or at our clients' work sites. We can get isolated from one another. Many of us have become way too self-reliant going so far that some people reinvent materials because it appears easier than collaborating with peers. While we take great measures to make the company's materials widely available using Windows Live Sync, still we weren't collaborating like we wanted to.

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Project Blogs Never Been Easier nor More Useful

Hal — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:06:14 +0000

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About seven years ago I speculated on this weblog a use for blogging on projects. It was a naive post at the time. I didn't have real conviction about it. I never encouraged my clients to have a try. Well, times have changed, or maybe I have changed. Project collaboration and up-to-date communication is valued more than ever. The technology just got so simple that there's no work to do to create and maintain a project blog.

Send an email and the project update is made

Posterous is a blogging and social media platform that works from your email account. You can use it from your desktop or your mobile phone. Just send a message to post@posterous.com and the rest is magic! The subject of your email becomes the title of the post. Anything you attach — photos, Powerpoint, recordings, documents — are handled by Posterous and presented elegantly on your blog. You can set up your blog so every member of your team can post. That would be very useful for keeping everyone up to date on progress, particularly when geographically dispersed. Just send an email and the project update is made!

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Project Performance Reviews Meets Microblogging

Hal — Thu, 28 May 2009 00:59:46 +0000

Project performance reviews are dead; long live performance reviews. A standard practice on projects is to conduct a lessons learned (post mortem) at the end of a project. In my opinion it doesn't produce much value. The current project is over so can't benefit from what is said. The project team is often broken up sending people to different projects. Instead, do project assessments all the time. On lean projects people have many practices for assessing learning and performance. The practices range from simple plus|delta reviews at the end of a meeting, to formal retrospectives at the end of a milestone or whenever a breakdown occurs. Now there's a new practice to add to the toolkit. In our ever-connected world, we can now get concise and timely assessments from our colleagues in just a few keystrokes — 140 to be exact.

Do project assessments all the time.

Business Week published a story by Jena McGregor, Job Review in 140 Keystrokes. BW reports that a company has taken a cue from Twitter to design a "quick-and-dirty 360 degree review" process. The service is called Rypple. Project teams can use the service at the end of a meeting, presentation, client review, client prep session, design collaboration, etc. to quickly get your colleagues' views. Rypple sends your request or question to the group. The 140-character responses are presented anonymously to the person sending out the question. It takes just a few minutes to complete. It looks particularly promising for people who work in geographically dispersed teams.

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Big Day for Project Managers Designers

Hal — Tue, 19 May 2009 11:58:49 +0000

What do The Sopranos, In-N-Out Burger and Jim Collins have in common? They are featured in Matthew May's book In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing which ships today. This is a little book about a big topic, how elegant design comes to be. Matt takes his readers through a series of stories that reveal the elements of elegant design. Why might that be useful for project managers? My first answer is we are all designers.

Start rethinking your role, whatever it is, as a designer.

Projects come to be when we make a big promise to someone. That big promise requires us to assemble a temporary organization to deliver on the promise. How we do that is completely up to us and our team. We design the temporary organization and we design the approach or path that we will take. For the most part, we don't think of our roles as designers of projects. Instead, I hear project managers speak of our role as conducting a project putting our attention on getting things done rather than creating a space or setting for doing. Does this matter? You bet. One way we characterize great projects is by the freedom project participants have to explore, experiment and express themselves. Designing for that is our challenge.(...)
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Project Kaizen Reading

Hal — Fri, 01 May 2009 01:19:31 +0000

Project management can get stuck…focused on just getting the work done. Great companies do more on their projects. They use each project to advance the strategy of the company. How? With kaizen. Take some time to read about it. Your projects and your team members will be better for it.

One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The kaizen Way kaizen starts at home…with everyday changes in how we live our lives.
Small Change: It's the Little Things in Life That Make a Big Difference! All kaizen begins with oneself.
The Fred Factor: How passion in your work and life can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary Extraordinary is just the accumulation of everyday changes.
All You Gotta Do Is Ask These authors share the secret to successful improvement programs.
Chasing the Rabbit: How Market Leaders Outdistance the Competition and How Great Companies Can Catch Up and Win, Foreword by Clay Christensen Steven Spear shares the four key practices that separate the best from the rest. MUST READ.
kaizen and the Art of Creative Thinking – The Scientific Thinking Mechanism The master of Toyota's improvement approach only recently published by Norman Bodek.
gemba Kaizen: A Commonsense, Low-Cost Approach to Management Massaki Imai's ground-breaking book on the practices that create the never-ending habit of improvement.

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Post tags: Project and Program Management, Project management, Toyota

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Have Project? Get Yammer

Hal — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 02:32:21 +0000

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Do you want to collaborate? Really, collaborate? … I'm serious, can you see yourself asking your colleagues questions? Offering answers? Going back and forth, not sure of what might result? Yes? Are you sure?

Are you stuck? Really stuck? Get Yammer. C'mon, you're not really stuck? Yammer anyway!

Then get Yammer. Huh? That's right, Yammer. What is it?"(...)
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Leave Behind Your Resignation

Hal — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 02:28:13 +0000

Every now and then along comes a surprise, something you wouldn't say, but now that someone has said it, makes all the sense in the world. The Think Big Manifesto is one of those surprises. It's a small book. Quick read. While it's a timely message for today's economic and political circumstances, there's a timelessness, too. Michael Port invites us, challenges us, engages us to join with him to think big in one provocative idea after another.

I see an authenticity in the writing that is refreshing. From the very beginning of the manifesto Michael confronts his own small thinking; he continues with that throughout the text. His boldest move against his small thinking may be his numbering of the principles in the big thinking code: 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34, a Fibonacci sequence. Why would he do that? It's weird. Bold, but weird. (There's my small thinking.) Items 1 and 1 remind me of "my brother Darryl and my other brother Darryl." How will we remember the principles? But Michael pulls it off.

I'm told that good reading doesn't involve subvocalization…sounding out the words as you read. But I challenge you to avoid it. Reading the manifesto is like being in a conversation with Michael. So don't resist, prepare yourself to be called to action, to leave behind your resignation…to join the revolution.

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Learning from The Elegant Solution

Hal — Wed, 21 May 2008 04:45:41 +0000

Two years ago I read Matthew May's book The Elegant Solution. It's a description of how to create an organization that day-after-day is recognized by the innovation that it creates.

The book is based on the time Matthew spent with the University of Toyota. I've reread the book to prepare for a Study Action Team™¹ that I am leading for a hospital that is being designed and constructed. Toyota is best known as the world's best manufacturer. But even more important to their long-term success, Toyota knows how to do projects.

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AIA “Hot Topic”: Target Value Design

Hal — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 04:34:29 +0000

Back in the fall 2007, the AIA Practice Management Digest asked Greg Howell, Executive Director of the Lean Construction Institute, to convene a panel of design and construction lean thinkers to write on lean design (for construction). I was one of the invited essayists. I wrote a paper with Greg and John Barberio. Our topic was Target-Value Design.

We proposed that Target-Value Design (TVD) turns the current design practice upside-down.

Rather than estimate based on a detailed design, design based on a detailed estimate.
Rather than evaluate the constructibility of a design, design for what is constructible.
Rather than design alone and then come together for group reviews and decisions, work together to define the issues and produce decisions then design to those decisions.
Rather than narrow choices to proceed with design, carry solution sets far into the design process.
Rather than work alone in separate rooms, work in pairs or a larger group face-to-face.

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Be Lean…Build Lean

Hal — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:07:22 +0000

As 2007 came to a close, lean design and construction got some well-deserved press. The manufacturing community shares their successes and learning about lean through Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) and their "Target Magazine". Most lean manufacturers operate in buildings that were neither designed or built lean. That can change. Karen Wilhelm, writing for Target, spent quite some time investigating the lean construction movement. She shares what she learned in a cover story, Collaboration Makes Construction Lean.

"The culture of heroes works against the smooth flow of work."

I won't spoil the article for you by summarizing it. Not only does Karen write well, she shares a vision of what we can be doing in the built environment. I will offer one teaser…(...)
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Business 2.0 Is Dead…Long Live Fast Company!

Hal — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 03:11:57 +0000

I've been a long-time reader of Business 2.0. Good writing, timely articles, and clever presentation made this magazine great. Unfortunately, my view has been in the minority. Circulation has fallen steadily along with ad pages. A magazine can't keep publishing with that trend even when it is owned by Time, Inc.

Long live Fast Company!

I renewed my subscription mid-September and they processed my credit card. Two days later I read in the Wall Street Journal that Time would no longer publish B2.0. I feel swindled. Time is extending my Fortune subscription for one issue for each two remaining B2.0 issues. That doesn't make me happy, particularly since they took my money only a few weeks ago. One-for-one would be a fairer deal.

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Mind Map Your Way to Project Success

Hal — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 03:41:45 +0000

Istarted mind mapping in the mid '80s. It was part of a program at my company to accelerate our learning. It was coupled with a speed reading program and rapid recall training. For the most part, all three stuck. But it's mind mapping that has been most useful over 20 years later.

Tony Buzan introduced the world to mind mapping. Essentially, it's an association technique for taking notes or collecting thoughts in a word-art fashion. Ideas are linked one-to-the-other making associations. According to Buzan, and in my experience, mind mapping increases your recall and helps make surprising connections of otherwise seemingly unrelated ideas. It is a great approach to use for planning, in preparation for innovation, and when in the midst of doing something creative.

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