IGLC-14: Production Planning and Control
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From the category archives:
project planning
No need to suffer with misunderstanding. Ask two questions to avoid it.
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Poor communication may be at the source of most project failures. Go directly to work on misunderstanding by adopting habits of reflection and inquiry.
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Agile and lean share a concern for keeping the project moving. One way they both do this is through the daily stand-up meeting which bear a striking resemblence to each other. Read on…
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So much of out time on projects is spent organizing project information for ourself and others. One great way of doing that is with mind maps. Want some help getting started? Get Chuck Frey’s new book on the subject.
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80/20 thinking establishes mindfulness and focus for the work we do. The claim is we get better results. But not everyone agrees. Read on…
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Project management systems ain’t what they used to be,” says the director of eWeek Labs. Read on to find out what he won’t be missing…
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David Schmaltz introduces us to misconceptions and “inescapable truths” of project planning in his latest must-read article “The Planning Wars”.
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Projects are inadvertently over-burdened (muri) when planning is done without consideration to the capabilities, interests, and availability of project performers. This week’s Project e-Tip explores what you can do about it.
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Keep your team ready to respond and adjust to the changing circumstances of the project by including them in regular planning conversations.
The Project Reformer’s e-Tip of the Week
039: [...]
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The Last Planner System® is routinely delivering projects on time and on budget. Want to know how? That will have to wait for another posting. But for today, I’ll introduce you to Glenn Ballard and Greg Howell, the creators of the Last Planner System. They authored a 13-page paper for IGLC-11 [...]
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The AEC world can learn from those people doing information technology projects. I hear people in IT say, “Construction is straight forward; everything is visible and predictable.” That shows how little they know about construction! But hidden in that statement is the recognition that IT projects must deal with high levels of [...]
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I promised to give you my feedback on my mind-mapping trial. Well, Chuck Frey of Innovation Tools beat me to it. He just did a review of the software I’ve been trying. I don’t have any point for comparison, but Chuck does. See ConceptDraw MINDMAP Pro 3 Product Review – InnovationTools: [...]
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I’m tired of traditional project management software. For so many projects MS Project, Suretrak, and P3 are overkill. Want something to handle those projects done by a small project team? Try mind mapping. That’s right, the memory technique created by Tony Buzan is being used quite successfully for managing [...]
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Brian Kennemer made a fix to the PPC add-in for MS Project. See projectified: PPC Part III: This Time…It’s Personal. He’s corrected a bug and offered two versions for calculating PPC. The first version checks the complete date against the baseline finish date. He also has a version that calculates based [...]
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Kudos to Brian Michael Kennemer!! He just published in Projectified an add-in macro for MS Project that calculates Percent of Plan (Promises) Complete (PPC). This is the key measure of planning reliability. Projects done on a lean basis have PPCs that are above 85%. Usual projects are under 50%. Due [...]
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It’s been a few weeks since I published a Project e-Tip. I’ve got lots to offer! I’ve been working with teams who are just beginning to go on the Last Planner System™. While a few are struggling, others are making great progress. This week’s tip just might be the key [...]
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Over a year ago I published a series of postings on the critical path method that produced all kinds of comments and emails from readers. I collected those postings into a two-page article that I published on this site as CPM: Fool Me Once, Fool Me Twice. Shortly thereafter, Greg Howell caught some [...]
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The PMBoK® describes 10 planning processes out of a total of 13 core processes for project management. These 10 processes comprise what Koskela and Howell (K&H) call management-as-planning in their paper The Underlying Theory of Project Management is Obsolete.
It is crazy to give the greatest effort to detail when we know the least about [...]
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What project manager hasn’t experienced being boxed in. Been there; done that. But that’s not what this posting is about. Or is it?. Seems there’s a new class of software promising to revolutionize project management. It’s called Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). Andrew Raskin writes about PLM in A Faster [...]
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You can find the PDF of CPM: Fool Me Once, Fool Me Twice in the left column of the weblog. Or, get it here .
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Some very thoughtful comments were made on some of the postings from last week’s series on CPM. I urge you to read those comments. Just click on the “(#) Comments” link at the end of each posting wherever you see a number other than “Please Comment”. I urge you to leave [...]
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Planning is conversation.
The future is uncertain and unknowable. Commitments must be adjusted as the future unfolds. Those adjustments can be done by the project manager or anyone on the project team. However, only those people involved in planning the project will be in the position to notice and then assess the need [...]
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Task durations depend on the quality of the conversations.
Schedules are not commitment. We have been fooled enough to know that! Just because we say a task is on the critical path doesn’t mean it will get done. Only when the intended performer promises to perform will it get done (and even then, [...]
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Task durations vary.
Experienced project managers will tell you the critical path moves on a project. Why? Tasks don’t start and finish as represented in the project schedule. This would be fine if all the performers for critical path tasks were always available to perform on the project, but this is not the [...]
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? Guy Kawasaki wrote, "Less is the new more." Easy to learn: symmetry, seduction, subtraction, and sustainability. Very valuable to do. Step 1: Read Matt's book!! just 140 keystrokes.
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