 Reforming Project Management |
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Saturday, September 21, 2002
What Are They All Thinking? Or, Maybe They Aren't
I just finished reading a short article tucked away in the Sept 16 issue of ENR, the construction industry news weekly published by McGraw Hill, Schedule School to Fill Skill Gap. (No byline on the article.) ENR reports that PMI is creating a school to teach project scheduling to the folks who are sitting at the computer. Why? It seems the scheduling software is so easy to use and inexpensive to run that a large number of people with no experience in project planning and scheduling are creating the schedules. I suppose that education is better than no education. But what are they thinking?
Friday, September 20, 2002
Planning is Practice for Planner-Doers
I'm in the process of writing a paper with Greg Howell titled Projects, Planning, and Promising. In the paper we are setting out to show what isn't covered today in the accepted practice of project management while offering a new definition of what needs to be covered and how that might occur. In the course of a conversation with two project managers using the Last Planner System™ this past week, I made the claim that while planning is temporal -- it has an often-short shelf-life -- the exercise of planning is a make-ready activity for the planner-doers. Planning is a practice session that gets planner-doers ready for later on being in action. One go through a planning session is ill preparation. It is like hitting one golf ball and thinking you are ready for the game. The more often one is in planning conversations, the more practice one gets, and therefore the more ready one is to act in the future that is surely to be different (in some way) from the planning scenario. Yet, when the planners are also the doers, then these people will be prepared to plan again on-the-fly. Unfortunately, the current practice separates planning from execution. A few smart and experienced people do the planning. Once the plan is accepted by the customer and management, then it is baselined (frozen) and published to the team. By that time the shelf-life may have expired leaving the doers in the situation that they can't be guided by the plan, yet they will be measured and controlled to it. For them it is a double whammy. They missed the practice session so they are not prepared for dealing with the unanticipated and they must still perform to the baselined plan. What could they be doing? Planning could be connected tightly to execution. Planning cycles could be short -- one-week intervals rather than the usual 90-180 day planning intervals. Finally, they could be learning as they go, adjusting their plan as their competence increases and the future unfolds. Such a shame... Welcome Greg
Did you notice yesterday's post was made by Greg Howell? Greg is a friend and business partner. He is a co-founder of the Lean Construction Institute and the co-author with Lauri Koskela of the paper The Underlying Theory of Project Management is Obsolete presented at PMI's Research Symposium in July 2002. I invited Greg to weigh in when he saw the opportunity. Look for more posts in the next few weeks.
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
Partnering, Promising, and Project Management
Trust and communication have been the primary issues in every one of over a hundred partnering meetings I have facilitated. The meetings themselves were designed to align objectives, establish lines of communication for resolving disputes, and to develop personal cooperative relationships. The underlying premise was that all project participants could get more out of the project by cooperating than by fighting. This would be accomplished by better relationships, communication within the organization, and more rapid dispute resolution. In many cases the resulting project organization was able to work more effectively than expected and many believed the project was well served by the effort. Even so, most people moved from being wary at their first partnering session to cynicism by the third. Why was this? I think the answer comes in two equally important parts. First, the participants assumed that the underlying approach to project management was effective and its performance was not related to the problem. As a result, nothing was changed in the way the work itself was managed. Second, participants shared a belief that trust could be built by aligning objectives and improving communications. Let me take them one at a time. Trust develops when people make and keep commitments. But promising to "communicate" isn't as effective as promising and delivering the submittal documents on a date certain. But people on projects, even with partnering sessions, are reluctant to make specific promises for performance when they lack confidence in their ability to deliver when they know other people are unlikely to deliver the needed prerequisites. So people promise to "try" and they say delivery will be "hopefully" on time. Project performance spirals down as delays compound. I now believe that project management itself, particularly the separation of planning and execution, is the root cause of the problem. No specific commitment to action is necessary in current project management because action is triggered by the project plan. Senior managers make contingent promises to deliver, but people at the operating level rarely make firm promises. How can their commitments be solid if the can’t say "NO!" when the conditions for doing the job are not at hand? The very idea of allowing people to say "no" rather than to accept a deficient assignment is hard to accept in an industry built on "Can Do." So we need to reform project management. Our project management system must enable people to work ready so those responsible can make specific promises. And we need to develop the ability to make and secure reliable promises. Project performance spirals up as the system and behavior develop together. Like love and marriage, horse and carriage, you can't have one without the other. Ah but if you do... Monday, September 16, 2002
Better is the enemy of good
I keep seeing people pursuing the best solution. In the process they delay receiving any benefit from the good solutions in hand. Imagine how much further we might be, how much more competitive, how much more agile, if we just adopted one improvement after the other.
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