Reforming Project Management » Language Action Perspective

Surprise! It’s a Lean Herrero at the 9th Lean Construction Congress

Hal — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 20:39:16 +0000

It's that time of year again. I'm attending the Lean Construction Congress in San Francisco. This is the 9th annual event. As usual, the focus is on companies who have adopted lean approaches for delivering AEC projects. The morning presentations have been great. Company presenters are doing a fine job speaking about the benefits they are getting and how the lean approaches and principles cause that to happen.

Becoming lean and being evermore lean is fundamentally about learning, not about lean.

It's a little early in the two days to be saying this, but what the heck… Herrero Contractors, not yet three years into their lean transformation, is the most advanced lean contractor in the US.¹ Herrero understands that becoming lean and being evermore lean is fundamentally about learning, not about lean. They seem to be learning everywhere and everyday.

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Construction Project Silence Puts Safety at Risk

Hal — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 01:57:28 +0000

Bad concrete and wrong epoxy are just two of the problems with the Big Dig. ENR ran two stories in the August 5, 2007 issue detailing guilty pleas on criminal charges along with failure to act responsibly with structural design issues. Certainly, the whole project is not bad. But living in Boston, we worry not knowing which parts are bad. While money is always a possible motive, in this case people clearly were not exercising their responsibilities as custodians of public safety. In short, few were speaking up and fewer still were listening.

The Two Great Wastes contribute in significant, yet incalculable ways, to the failings on all projects.

I know first-hand how easy it is to just drive on by safety issues. It's easy to think, "Somebody must be taking care." Last Friday I drove by a police construction detail where a new home was being connected to a sewer line in the center of a state road. There were two police officers along with two flag persons and a 1/2 dozen workers. One man was neck deep in a straight-cut narrow trench shoveling loose gravel. In the situation I describe OSHA requires a trench box anytime a trench is 5 feet or more deep. From my passing view, this worker was just about at that limit. Was a trench box required? I don't know. There was no trench box present. I didn't stop. I should have stopped. But had I stopped, what conversation would I had and with whom? To my knowledge, no one was injured. No incident occurred. But it is really beside the point. I feel terrible for not stopping.

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Day Two Daily Scrum

Hal — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 03:44:06 +0000

Another great day of work. We got through the Daily Scrum in 13 minutes (without standing). I asked for a weekly retrospective to examine what we are learning and what needs our attention. In short, team members assessed they were learning and accomplishing far more than they expected. Let's see if we can keep this going. There's a lot for us to accomplish in the coming vacation week.

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Scrum: Inspect and Adapt

Hal — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 02:03:26 +0000

There's nothing like learning-in-action.¹. We just finished our planning session for our development project. I was surprised by how much time we spent defining what it meant to be done. In the LPS world we call that establishing conditions of satisfaction. But we struggle to get team members to stay in that conversation. "Just tell me what you want!" The ScrumMaster wouldn't let us move on 'til he confirmed that the whole team understood what would satisfy the Product Owner.

I'm looking forward to comprehending!

Towards the end of today's session, I noticed that our ScrumMaster frequently said, "We'll inspect and adapt." (He said it before we started the planning. I just hadn't noticed.) "Of course," I thought. The future is uncertain and unknowable. That's just what we do on (LPS) projects. But I also know it's not what is usually done on CPM-style projects. Conventional wisdom (and scheduling software) guides people to put a plan in place and stick to it. The result is project managers often try to get reality to match their plan. Doesn't work. Never did.

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I Hired a Certified ScrumMaster

Hal — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 02:03:16 +0000

Why would a lean projects guy hire a Scrum software development ScrumMaster? Short answer: it seemed like a good idea at the time. Seriously, I'm doing some work for an architectural engineering firm. The company focuses on designing technically sophisticated manufacturing facilities. We are developing for them a responsibility-based planning approach. It's starting out as a Scrum adaptation of the Last Planner System® (LPS). I thought…what better way to understand how Scrum can inform the changes to LPS than to perform our own development effort as a Scrum project.

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Say “No” without Guilt or Embarrassment

Hal — Mon, 14 May 2007 02:11:51 +0000

One of the reasons for trouble on projects is that people say Yes when asked to take on a task when they really should be saying No. This results in others who depend on the completion of that task to start their task failing to do so. Like dominoes toppling, the project schedule falls apart.

The Power of a Positive No, by William Ury is a primer in how to have a positive conversation where the result is No. In Ury's essay How I Got to No, he recounts his insight after meeting with Warren Buffett. The Oracle of Omaha said he says NO to a thousand investment opportunities before finding just the right one to say Yes to.(...)
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Moving Beyond Obsolete Theory

Hal — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 20:53:36 +0000

It's my pleasure to speak again at a meeting of the Puget Sound PMI Chapter. Two years ago I gave a rather long and complicated presentation on obsolete theory, Fayol, Flores, and what can be learned from construction project management. This time I'll be attempting a much shorter and less complicated talk. Originally I titled it "An Update on Obsolete Theory", but I've reconsidered. (...)
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Planning, Scheduling, and Forecasting

Hal — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 04:20:25 +0000

Glen Alleman took me to task for yesterday's posting Misunderstanding Project Planning as Anticipation. He wrote a rather comprehensive rebuttal to my claim that the general understanding of planning is as anticipating a future. Glen makes a good case that best practice — at least in DoD projects — doesn't misunderstand planning. Since I've only worked at one defense contractor, I won't contradict him. I will say that my experience of the everyday practice of planning is as I described. Project managers/planners usually take an approach that limits alternatives concluding with "the plan". The plan is then represented as a CPM schedule. I don't argue with Glen that this is inadequate, nor am I saying that some people know better AND do something different. I am saying that the usual practice is to have a smart experienced person create a plan that is then represented as a schedule for others to follow. That is a practice that must change if we want better project performance. (...)
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Misunderstanding Project Planning as Anticipation

Hal — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 03:26:17 +0000

Our everyday speaking gets in the way of better planning. This weekend I was listening to Tim Russert interview Presidential Spokesman Tony Snow on Meet the Press. Tim asked Tony about the plan for winning the war in Iraq. The question inferred that something went terribly wrong. Tony replied,

"I'm not sure anything went wrong. Battle plans don't live beyond the first encounter with the enemy."

Tony went on to say that like most of life we can't anticipate the future…no amount of planning can change that. Tony is right about that. The future is uncertain and unknowable. Grasping that fact is a key to better planning. (...)
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Distraction, another Form of the Two Great Wastes™, Leads to Project Failure

Hal — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 03:31:14 +0000

Article Series - Why Projects Fail

Why Good Projects Fail Anyway
Could Occam’s Razor Explain Project Failures?
Why Projects Fail
Silence — One of the Two Great Wastes™ — Is a Project and Career Killer
Distraction, another Form of the Two Great Wastes™, Leads to Project Failure

There's no independent study I'm quoting today. No, I'm just sharing what I've been observing. In yesterday's post on Silence Is a Project and Career Killer, the authors of the study emphasized that team members need to be speaking. My experience is that most team members, at one time or another, do speak about their concerns for the project. But others — team members, leaders, managers, and clients — are too distracted by their own concerns to pay attention to the speaking. I mean, really pay attention. The kind of attention that requires putting the laptop cover down. The kind of attention that keeps you from answering the telephone during the conversation. The kind of attention that the person speaking walks away knowing that s/he has been listened to by you. That kind of attention. (...)
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Silence — One of the Two Great Wastes™ — Is a Project and Career Killer

Hal — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 04:02:46 +0000

Article Series - Why Projects Fail

Why Good Projects Fail Anyway
Could Occam’s Razor Explain Project Failures?
Why Projects Fail
Silence — One of the Two Great Wastes™ — Is a Project and Career Killer
Distraction, another Form of the Two Great Wastes™, Leads to Project Failure

Facts are in. Not speaking on projects is a key contributor to project failure. Worse, it's also leads to failed careers. Three years ago Greg Howell and I authored a paper Two Great Wastes™ which we presented at IGLC-12. The paper was somewhat speculative. We had observed teams that just weren't making the progress that knew was possible. After studying a number of teams we noticed a pattern. Many of the poor performing teams were composed of people who didn't speak up and/or leaders who weren't listening. We coupled those observations with some research into some big disasters. We concluded that project deterioration was a function of not listening and not speaking. We named those behaviors the Two Great Wastes.

Teams that can't or don't speak up are doomed to fail.

The Concours Group validated our conclusions with their study. (...)
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Project Management for Professional Service Firms

Hal — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 02:49:09 +0000

The vast majority of projects involve a few people and take a few months. PMI and Prince seem to ignore that majority…but not Ron Rosenhead. Ron offers project management consulting and advice for accountants, attorney, librarians, and other professionals. He offers an approach based on a stripped-down version of Prince. Still, it may be more than these people need.

"Soft" is what makes projects successful.

Ron makes it easy for the motivated service professional to be successful with projects. He offers introductory material, a course-by-email, and an eBook, Deliver that Project. I've just finished reviewing the eBook. Attorneys and accountants will find it to be comprehensive. Most projects don't need more than Ron is advising.

I found one thing missing. Projects of all sizes and complexity depend on successful conversations for coordination. We act like conversations are the soft stuff of projects. For some reason "soft" is not important. Too bad. In my experience, "soft" is what makes projects successful. For those of you who are open to exploring the "soft" side of projects, have a look at these project meeting protocols. And, subscribe to Ron's email course while you're at it.

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