Archive for the 'teams' Category

I still meet many project managers who just state that sharing a project vision (if ever there is one) is a waste of time and that the project team should just concentrate on what they are asked (told ?) to do. This always reminds me of my first project management courses, more than 30 years ago (dinosaurs were still alive), when I was told that: "The more information people have about a project, the more veto power we are giving them…so, it is important to keep information sharing to the strict minimum, using as a strict yardstick of information distribution direct-task-oriented need-to-know information."

I am appalled to see that this primitive belief still endures today, since it shows so little understanding of how human minds and hearts really work. I am also appalled that, each time I ask about Vroom's Expectancy Theory of Motivation (dating back from the early 1960s) and it's significance to project management audiences (including many PMPs), I find out that it is still mostly unheard of or, when it is known of, it rings no bell about the relationship between sharing a project vision and mobilizing project teams to ensure project success. This is very unfortunate since Vroom's simple theory:

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In my first guest-blogger entry, I mentioned the importance of managing perceptions. I wrote that not doing so was the main cause of why only one project out of three was considered successful by major stakeholders, according to the Standish Group's Chaos Report¹. I concluded that "not managing perceptions" could be considered the 10th waste of ill-managed projects.

It is easy to say that we have to manage perceptions. But where and how should we start doing that? The Chaos Report gives us pretty good leads on that. The report identifies the involvement of end-users as the No.1 in its Top Ten List of project key success factors. I talked about that also when Hal gave me the opportunity to contribute a project e-tip back in 2003 (e-tip 016: Keep the Customer/End-User Involved). After all these years, this e-tip is still relevant and I propose to rename it The Proximity Principle and to revisit it as it pertains to fighting the 10th waste.

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1. www.projectsmart.co.uk/docs/chaos-report.pdf [ ⇑ back ]

"Project Quality Management must address the management of the project and the product of the project"

(p.180, PMBoK, 3rd edition)

In an earlier blog entry, I presented the Nine Wastes of Mismanaged Projects, according to Lean Project Management gurus (Howell, Macomber, Koskela, Bodek). I said then that I saw a 10th waste adversely affecting project success: Not Managing Perceptions. Today, I will briefly explain why I believe that not managing perceptions is a major project waste, and why it has to be taken care of for our projects to be successful.

The sentence from the PMBoK quoted above is one of the most important messages on successful project management. It means that project quality, a strong indicator of project success, does not only depend on the physical characteristics of project deliverables, it also depends on HOW they were delivered. It means that a project is not only a destination, it is also a journey. It means that in matters of quality, BOTH the journey and the destination are important.

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This is not a book review. That will come later. I'm only sharing the news that there is a new Shigeo Shingo book: kaizen and the Art of Creative Thinking. Norman Bodek gave me the chance to review an early version of the book. I'm quite impressed. I've wondered for quite some time if there is a systematic behind Toyota's success other than PDCA. We now all know the answer. Shingo developed an approach that helps everyone to be more creative. And that approach is readily learned.

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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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Short answer: Don't try! That's the advice anyway from the people at The Four Seasons hotel chain. Instead, they hire for attitude. US News goes on to report in Four Seasons Service Is Unstinting, "…then train them thoroughly and treat them with the same respect (management) expects them to show hotel guests." When scanning resumes and interviewing candidates the question they try to answer is, "Are you an innately happy person?" They understand how to teach people to be a bellman or a deskclerk, but "If your momma didn't teach you to be nice, then (they) can't either."

What would be the equivalent attitudes for people who work on projects?

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. Read the rest of this entry ¶

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Some things just don't go out of style. Four years ago, PM Forum published an essay on succeeding on projects. Many people have referenced the essay. It's now my turn.

Mark Lilly and Tim Rahschulte¹ introduce their unbreakable project rules this way:

"Why do so few projects succeed? Despite the decades of increasingly complex attempts to manage projects, far too many managers overlook the 10 Unbreakable Rules for Project Success. As outlined below, these common sense guidelines hold the key to increasing your success rate and delivering greater consistency across your project's lifecycle."

Recognize the limitations of a me-first orientation. Projects require cooperation, collaboration, and coordination.

Their advice is directed at individuals on project teams. Here are their 10 unbreakable rules: Read the rest of this entry ¶

1. "Lilly and Rahschulte, a university professor, collaborate on enterprise projects through Tin Orb, LLC, a knowledge services company in Portland, Ore" as reported in the PM Forum article [ ⇑ back ]

Over the years I've written quite a bit about constraints. In the process environment there are physical constraints which are easy to spot. You'll see work piling up in front of the constraint. Projects are always constrained. We think that the big constraint is time. The project promise date (deadline) provides a limitation on how much can be accomplished. Most of us are familiar with physical constraints. Getting more done is limited in some way by how much capacity one can bring to the situation. It can appear that physical constraints are the only constraints. In other postings I've written about policy constraints and paradigm constraints. Perhaps I'll revisit them. Until last Friday, I hadn't considered that there was another class of constraints. Jim Dallas changed my mind. Read the rest of this entry ¶

What project techniques make the biggest contribution to project success? Gantt charts? No. Earned Value? No. Critical Path? No. The biggest contributor just might be "all that jazz." Read what these authors have to say, Playing the Live Jazz of Project Management.

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Project success often depends on the ability of the team to respond to what comes their way. Improvisation is the key skill. USA Today ran an interview today with Wynton Marsalis, Hot Corporations Know How to Swing. Harvard's Kennedy School of Government named Marsalis one of America's Best Leaders in 2006.

The interview is full of great insights on leadership and management. Marsalis defined the essence of swing,

"It's the feeling that our way is more important than my way. It is the core that makes us all want to work together."

Embrace opposites. They are, in fact, the same.Marsalis goes on to say,

"The perception of jazz is that we all get along. In actuality, we're always trying to get along, and it is the integrity of that process that determines the quality of the swing. A business that swings will definitely be successful."

Wynton Marsalis offers these five tips for putting swing into your organization: Read the rest of this entry ¶

Another from my Jeffrey Pfeffer pile of clippings The High Price of Workplace Mistrust, B2.0, December 2006. Unfortunately, you can't read the essay online. (Perhaps the editors didn't think it was very important.)

The bigger problem are the disaffected employees that stay on.

Prof Pfeffer makes a link between the increase in turnover since 2004 to the current practices of employers based on distrust. He cites that turnover of executives, salespeople, and production employees has nearly doubled and turnover of professional and technical staff is up about 70%. During the same time the American Management Association reports that 76% of employers monitor employees' website connections, 55% retain and review email messages, monitoring of phone usage has jumped from 9% to a 51%, and testing for drug use has become standard. While Prof Pfeffer doesn't offer any statistically valid study linking the loss of privacy to increased turnover he makes it clear that he believes a link exists.

What needs to be done? Pfeffer answers, Read the rest of this entry ¶

No, this isn't another ruse to sell greeting cards. The idea of an International Project Management Day was conceived to bring recognition and appreciation to project managers. The stated purpose is

"Increase the awareness of the value of project management within the large business, government, small business, and social communities and promote project management as a true profession and key business strategy. This includes, but is not limited to: construction, information technology, entertainment, government, aeronautics, health care, ecology, social, disaster recovery, community improvement, and quality of life projects."

Take the time to acknowledge or appreciate someone on your project, in your organization, or your circle of family and friends.

Showing appreciation and acknowledgement is a good thing…a really good thing. It keeps us going both on the giving and receiving end. Let's take the time, not just on November 2nd, to let project managers, project teams, clients, and contractors know that we sincerely appreciate working with them. The Gallup Organization research indicates without appreciation and acknowledgement at least once every 7 days individuals and teams won't sustain high performance.¹

In addition to the IPM-day events you'll be attending, how about you begin building a habit in your organization for acknowledging and appreciating each other? Last year I invited readers to Try this with Me: Acknowledge and Appreciate. I followed it with my Field Report: Acknowledge and Appreciate. I have to admit I need to do more work. It takes my attention to engage with others in ways that they know I appreciate them. So, I'll be doing the exercise again for the next two weeks. Here's the exercise: Read the rest of this entry ¶

1. As reported in First, Break All the Rules, by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, published in 1999. [ ⇑ back ]

I've been working with a number of architectural and engineering firms in the last six months. I've been surprised at how so few of them have the habit of conducting project kick-off meetings as their routine. Knowing that, I'm not surprised at the problems these firms encounter with project planning and schedules.

Why have a project kickoff meeting? One manager said, "Geez, there's only 200 hours in this project. I can't waste any of them on meetings." Sound familiar? Before I respond let's review my definition of a project.

A project is a single-purpose network of commitments undertaken by a temporary social system.

People come together on projects as strangers.

I've been challenged in an AE firm when I refer to the project organization as a temporary social system. People say that the "team" consists of employees who know each other. While that might be true, it is also likely that the group is not a team at all. Rather, the people are working on more than one project. The other projects are being done with other people. They get their assignments as work orders. These are not project teams. This is more like sandlot baseball than a well-practiced team.

Face it. Projects are temporary organizations. People come together on projects as strangers. We're not likely to change that. What we can do is make sure people share a context, have intentions that are aligned, and have a relationship that allows them to successfully coordinate action together. I know of no better way than by starting every project with a kickoff meeting.

What would you do in those meetings? Here's my proposal for an agenda.

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The planning system is likely to become more reliable just because you are giving your attention to reliability; it follows the axiom: what gets measured gets done. However, without deliberate systematic attention to the design of the system planning system performance will settle on a plateau.

Planning (un)reliability is a function of (at least) five factors: dependence, variation, uncertainty, system design, and competence. The processes of making work ready, promising publicly, and reporting complete by announcing when you are done are usually sufficient for building competence for operating as last planners within the system. The acts of promising, re-promising, and estimating times to perform build the capability for doing those actions more competently through time. Using the Project Meeting Protocols (mentioned in previous postings) improves performance. But there is generally more to improve beyond what individuals responsibilities.

At least once every three weeks conduct a meeting with the project team to review the accumulated reasons for plan failure.

One significant impact on group performance is the design of the project. For instance, if work has been fractionalized by specialty, then the effects of dependence (you can't start 'til I finish) are increased. One of the usual (greatest) reasons for planning failure is the prior work of others wasn't completed. Often times work can be structured in a way that decouples one person's work from another. That, in turn, increases the reliability of the project. Another common reason is a constraint was uncovered once the task was started. This would point to a failure of the make-ready process of look-ahead planning.

What can you do? Read the rest of this entry ¶

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he motivationists would have us believe that people do what they are rewarded for doing. Bonus programs, salesforce commissions and incentives, and promises of raises and promotions are part of the everyday way companies organize themselves in hopes of getting higher performance from their employees. My own experience is different from that (and numerous studies reported in HBR are consistent with my experience). Neither the carrot nor the stick get me to do more work or better work. I do more, give more, and engage more deeply when my interests and ambitions are connected to those of the organization.

Neither the carrot nor the stick get me to do more work or better work.

In the August '05 issue of PMI's PM Network Neil Whitten offers his advice on getting more from our teams. He wants project managers to "Celebrate" the accomplishments of the team. "Leadership," he says, "means acknowledging a job well-done by thanking the project team that did it." Neil urges readers to do this at least once every three months. The Gallup Organization's research supports that as published in First, Break All the Rules, by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. Except, the research showed that people in continuously high performing organizations receive acts of appreciation and acknowledgement at least once every 7 days! Read the rest of this entry ¶

I've been re-thinking the Daily Coordination Meeting. I've been watching daily meetings. Often, the project participants are taking care of basic coordination — doing last-minute planning — rather than managing their commitments. The name of the meeting Daily Coordination is part of the problem, but only part. Coordinating one group with another is a small part of the the daily meeting. The most important part is taking the time to let each other know that you and your group have done what you said you would do for that day. This builds trust and it creates a basis for the performing groups to take the hedging out of their promising. When one group doesn't have confidence in what another group will do for them, then we understandably get hedging. Hedging leads to work areas being ready but no one working. The aim is for the project work to flow unimpeded from one performing group to another.

Even the most reliable performers have to deal with the unexpected.

A second key aspect of a meeting for managing commitments is to make timely declarations of completion. Read the rest of this entry ¶

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