Let’s start with my definition of a breakdown:
An interruption while in the midst of fulfilling ones commitment jeopardizing the completion of the commitment.
In the previous five postings I described three actions for preparing for breakdowns:

Make commitments at the last responsible moment by engaging in recurrent conversations exploring, “Is it time to act?”
Make our commitments with [...]

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I last wrote about Designing Breakdown-Tolerant Project Environments in a four-part series: [1] [2] [3] [4]. It’s not complete — my thinking that is!
I keep thinking about uncertainty and variation. One of my clients says we are preoccupied with making our futures certain. Wondering, I think we just don’t have enough trust [...]

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Life happens. It just does. If we wake up in the morning we are bound to be surprised at some moment during the day. I bought a Jeep Wrangler to share with my about-to-be 17 year-old son. The vehicle had 71,200 miles on it when I purchased it. I was [...]

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In the first part of this series I explored the circumstances for breakdowns and the action to take to minimize the general situation for breakdowns:
Make commitments at the last responsible moment by engaging in recurrent conversations exploring, “Is it time to act?”
Step Two: Making commitments with confidence that they can be fulfilled as promised
No commitment [...]

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I left off looking at the question, “Do we make commitments at the last responsible moment or at the most responsible moment?” I looked at the consequences of acting later than the ‘last responsible moment’ concluding that a breakdown was likely. So the trick is to make it just before the last moment. [...]

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My exploration of variation started with a chapter title The Corrupting Influence of Variability in Factory Physics (2nd Ed.), by Hopp and Spearman. This book had a huge influence on the development of the Last Planner System of Production Control™ and Lean Construction. (I’ve skimmed the book a few times.) A 2nd [...]

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First of a series on project breakdowns and how to avoid them…

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Consider this a starting point in a series of postings. At this moment I’m just rambling. I’ll use following postings to develop my thinking.
My basic claim about the environment of projects has not changed. Projects are conducted in an uncertain and unknowable future. In addition, project participants learn, collaborate, innovate, and [...]

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