Archive for the 'project control' Category

Hard to imagine in the world of projects that anyone would ask the question "Why do deadlines matter?" However, in the world of politics and world conflicts the argument is front and center. We learned this week, President Bush just won his battle with the Democrats in Congress. There will be no deadlines in the funding bill for the war in Iraq. To my surprise, I opened the June issue of Business 2.0 turning to Jeffrey Pfeffer, Professor, Stanford University, to see his essay Why Deadlines Matter. Read the rest of this entry ¶

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. Read the rest of this entry ¶

Project constituents always have two big questions:

1. How is the project going?
2. When will we finish?

While the Gantt chart doesn't answer those two questions, it is a great conversation starter. The Gantt chart sets the context for engaging others to shape assessments about the project. A Gantt view quickly conveys a whole perspective — high level — of the work required and the work accomplished. Speaking with a Gantt helps you collect the attention of the people in the room. It is a prop for bringing focus to the project while aiding the participants to put aside their coming-in concerns. By the way, people expect to see a Gantt chart. Starting a project review or planning update without one might distract your participants.

The purpose of planning is getting that work done that should be done.

But you'll need more than the conversation starter if you intend to answer the two big questions. You'll also want to know how good your planning is. There are three easy-to-calculate measures of planning effectiveness (reliability). They are

Read the rest of this entry ¶

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Almost every project has a Gantt chart, but what is it doing for you? I ask the question with a sincere interest in how projects are better managed with Gantt charts. Is it a visual thing? Does it help you to steer the project? How does it aid you to stay in control? Alternatively, are their other tools that you rely on to manage your projects? Please leave your comments.

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Is project management even possible? David Schmaltz thinks not. He writes Why Project Managers Can't Manage Projects. Just read it…please…for your sake. It's Pure Schmaltz!

The manufacturing world is quite familiar with the term "hidden factory"¹. It points to the extra resources — people, material, energy, tooling, etc. — that are required to rework and repair the variances coming from the production process.

Projects have plenty of variance. Much of it requires rework. Some work is inevitably scrapped. One source of rework results from work that gets out of sequence. One work step proceeds without the appropriate precedent tasks being completed. When the intended precedent task does complete the other task(s) must be reworked. Or, there's no budget available for rework, so someone on the team decides to make do. Or, there's no time available for rework, so someone decides to make do.

iSixSigma ran a cartoon today, Hidden Factory, that got me thinking about what we can do about the hidden project factory. I've been Unsettled About Variation before. While I ponder in my unsettlement, I want to get you thinking with me.

What do you systematically do on your projects to minimize the wastes associated with poor quality?

Please leave a comment. I'll write more about this throughout November.

1. Armand Feigenbaum introduced the idea that there is the equivalent of an additional factory hidden within a factory to handle the defects of production. Later, Jeffrey G. Miller and Thomas E. Vollmann popularized the idea in their paper for HBR. [ ⇑ back ]

Create the situation on your project where people will speak.

Project slippages happen on all types of projects. Johanna Rothman, writing for Projects @ Work, offers advice in her article You're Slipping. As usual, Johanna offers practical advice. While she is writing about software projects, projects of all types are more alike than they are not. There's plenty to learn from software and from Johanna. Have a look.

Here's my additional advice: create the situation on your project where people will speak. In most cases, someone on the project has at least had an inkling that something was not going right. Too often the environment is not right for raising the concern…for whatever reasons. When we create the situation for speaking and then we listen we will get the most advance notice that some action is required. In the end it results in less slippage.

Lean concepts of establishing flow by pacing activity has made its way to construction.

Actions to Influence Continuous Flow

Jammara Rossi Bulhoes, et al (presented by Flavio Picchi)

Value stream mapping was adopted to identify components of inventory, levels of work in process, and delivery delays. Used the TPS house to shape an implementation approach for a large shopping plaza in Brazil. They started with standardized work.

Changing minds of engineers was the first challenge.

Engineers had a large batch mindset. "Talking to them about lean concepts — small batches and flow — was a great fight." Eventually they adopted a small batch approach that was paced (matched) to other work. They then brought a focus to reliability at every stage of activity. Buffers were established for rain delays. They also used a five why approach for the problems they incurred. Results:

• Cycle time reduced
• Waste reduced. Productivity was 2x the budget and 4x the reference case.
• Far more reliable workflow

Still, people thought that large batches might improve performance!

Unreliable or unexpected behavior of trade contractors in allocating resources is a major source of variation in construction. Last Planner® acts to reduce variability.

How Last Planner Motivates Subcontractors to Improve Plan Reliability

Rafael Sacks

Contractors are involved in multiple projects. They tend to optimize for their own benefit by sending workers to projects. Contractors are motivated by profits, cash flow, risk, and reputation.

Sharing information about reliability — PPC — changes the behavior and consequently the equilibrium state.

The starting case is a naive subcontractor who provides enough people for the work that is available. Clever subcontractors assess the reliability of the project manager to provide the work that was promised. Rafael modeled the behavior using game theory. He concludes from the model that subcontractors will provide fewer resources than requested and the project manager will ask for more than is needed. Neither has the knowledge of what the other is doing. This is the equilibrium case. The situation changes when they are using the Last Planner.

Sharing information about reliability — PPC — changes the behavior and consequently the equilibrium state. Both parties are more likely to ask for and provide for exactly what is needed.

• When plan reliability is made transparent by means of PPC
• Plan reliability continues to improve
• Honesty improves
• The entire project moves to a higher performing situation

Rafael concludes: use a pull approach and share reliability data. Only then will people become more trusting and trust-worthy.

Phase Planning is a key collaborative practice for establishing how a team wants to meet an upcoming milestone. Among other things, a phase planning session establishes relationships that later on will allow people to deal effectively with the project uncertainties.

Phase Planning Today

Steve Knapp, et al (presented by Greg Howell)

Greg took us through a photo case study of a phase planning session conducted by DPR Construction on the renovation of a floor of a hospital. As Greg claims is usual

There comes a moment when the team agrees they can do it.

• Not one right way to run the meetings, yet
• Agenda is common: context, strategy, plan, ratify — the moment the team agrees they can do it that way, and record
• Bar stools are a nice prop. Use them to have key stakeholders describe what is important to them about the project.
• Say, "Tell me more," a lot. Take the time to explore each others' assessments, concerns, and claims.
• Let leadership evolve in the meeting. It is a conversation among the team.

"Planning happens in conversation. Phase planning is the place to have it."

In the last week saying "No" on your projects is getting attention. Thanks to Frank Patrick for pointing us to postings from Jeffrey Phillips, Getting to No, and Ester Derby No Is in the Air. I couldn't help but add my two cents Be Responsible, Say "No". Long time readers know this as one of my soap boxes. In November 2002, I was writing about uncertainty Reduce Uncertainty by Promising Reliably.

Promising is in our control. We can say "yes" or "no". (I know some people think they must say "yes" to keep their job.) When we say "yes" but we mean "no" we add uncertainty to the project. When we say "yes" but fail to allocate sufficient capacity to the task (blocking time in our calendar) we add uncertainty. When we say "yes" but don’t understand what will satisfy our customer we add uncertainty. Do I need to go on?

A few years earlier (1994) Greg Howell and Glenn Ballard, both of the Lean Construction Institute, wrote the paper, Lean Construction Theory: Moving Beyond 'Can-Do'. They claim that we can't improve our project performance without people saying "No".

(C)urrent management approaches are built on and entice dishonesty. We cannot improve performance unless new thinking exposes the contradictions and weaknesses in our underlying mental models and injects certainty and honesty into the management of projects. It is simple in concept and not hard in execution once we take the challenge of no longer accepting "Can Do" when "Won’t Do" is appropriate. Only then will we have the consistent feedback needed for rapid learning.

The idea of saying "No" as being responsible has been around for quite some time. While "simple in concept and not hard in execution", we still get far too many yeses when no is more appropriate. It may be simplistic to suggest fear is in the way of saying no.

Here's one action you can take to get the no you need to get. Make it your routine to invite people to say "No". Only then will Can-Do mean anything. That's right, by inviting people to decline requests you and others make you are creating the situation for honest conversations among your team. It's in that setting of honesty that we can be most successful.

A project team has a chance to succeed when team members feel free to fully express how they are doing, what help they need, and what help they can offer. Unfortunately, all too often project teams are engaged in another practice. Johanna Rothman, author of Managing Product Development, calls it Schedule Game #1: Schedule Chicken. Johanna describes the game this way:

(E)veryone claims they're on time. But the reality is that each person is waiting for another person to explain why he or she is not ready. In that case, each person graciously says, "Oh, that's fine with me if you take an extra week or two or three. No problem."

Johanna explains how it's possible to play the game:

Schedule Chicken occurs when PMs only measure the milestones (the date), and not the stuff that's created (the feature set) and the progress towards creating that stuff (velocity) and how good that stuff is (the defect levels) all throughout the project.

Based on Johanna's posting title I'm guessing she'll be treating us to a series on schedule games teams play. Let's help her out. What games have you seen team members playing?

In this Project e-Tip I am introducing actions the project manager/leader can take for organizing and keeping a project on track. Try it out. Try speaking about the project mission for six weeks. I'm not kidding! It takes that much repetition to convey the seriousness and to make it stick. Don't stop short.

The Project Reformer's e-Tip of the Week

004: Keep the Project Mission Alive

Projects tend to drift away from the original purpose. The principal truing mechanism is the project mission. Don't misunderstand. I'm not suggesting a long drawn-out process for creating and word-smithing a mission statement. No. I am saying the team needs a concrete way of speaking about what it is they are there to accomplish on behalf of the customer. State the mission in the customer's language…in a language that conveys the value the customer derives from using what it is you are providing. For example, if you are doing a project where your product is a software program for sales management, state the mission as (something like) "tools for increasing company sales." You can't over-communicate the project mission. State and re-state the mission at the opening and closing of each project meeting. Reconfirm the mission with the customer throughout the life of the project. Customers change their view of what they need AND you and your project team will see better ways of taking care of customer concerns. By keeping the mission in front of the customer and the team you will avoid project drift but not miss the opportunity of course correction.

©2003 Hal Macomber | weblog.halmacomber.com | e-Tip Archive | PDF | Submit Tip

Still waiting on readers for their e-Tips!

In Koskela's and Howell's (K&H) paper The Underlying Theory of Project Management is Obsolete they describe thermostatic control is the principal espoused (or inferred) theory of control on projects. Examples:

Thermostatic control locks us into a naive plan…uninformed by the world that has unfolded.

• Cool above 72° and heat below 68°.
• Returning from the South Pole navigating between sets of markers.

Thermostatic control is based on some decision/choice of what is right, or best, and then invokes corrective action when conditions vary from that stated norm.

What's wrong with this theory? You just can't set it and forget it. Unlike temperature or path, there is no one correct path on the project. The path to completion shifts throughout the project. Sure, we have a good idea of what must be done to finish, but the sequence can change and some of the tasks will fall off while other required actions will be discovered. Thermostatic control at best locks us into a naive plan…uninformed by the world that has unfolded.

Execution and control combine as performers rely on their intuition and experience.

The good news is we find the theory-in-use doesn't conform to the espoused theory. In response to out-of-date plans and execution that fails to consider the readiness of performers, controlling activities function as negotiation between the directors and the performers. Referring to this breakdown of control, people disparage the team by saying they are out of control rather than acknowledging they are likely better off than operating to an obsolete plan.

Where is this headed? The six σ advocates might suggest we must identify the variables and bring them under control (as if we can). But perhaps the machine metaphor has served its useful life; project control is more like navigating a boat. The crew with their hands on the wheel and the lines rely on visceral signals — a fluttering in the sheet, tension in the line, a slight list to starboard — to make their adjustments. Execution and control combine as performers rely on their intuition and experience. The destination is reached even though the boat may never be on course.

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