 Reforming Project Management |
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Friday, October 18, 2002
How do project controls work?
We all know the way they are supposed to work. It goes like this -- A variance from standard is detected in the reports, the cause for variance determined by managers who take action. Or at least it is supposed to work this way. Can anyone give me an example where this has worked? I mean where the standard was accepted, the variance was recognized as genuine, the root cause was identified, and the action taken made a clear difference.
While we are waiting for the examples to roll in, consider Professor Clarkson Oglesby's observation that people mostly do what management thinks is important. When pressed, he said people knew what mattered by the questions management asked and where they spent money. Two questions come each week straight from management to the crew, "How much did you get done? How many hours did you spend?" In anticipation of next week's "question", people do what they can to make their answers look good. Pipe fitters call the work they do to increase recorded progress near the end of the month, "Show Pipe." The reports look good but real performance drops. The situation is made worse when people select work with the most favorable ratio between effort and credit received. Management turns up the volume as performance declines. They "ask" the questions more forcefully and fire those who can't find a good answer. Installing show pipe or doing the easy work first ain’t dumb or being difficult. People are doing just what management asked. It is hard to call the results, "unintended consequences" when people respond this way. Let me say it plain -- project controls pressurize short-term performance. The fact that the information in monthly reports is rarely used to make management decisions is mostly a good thing. Firing "poor performers" or adding more people rarely turns a troubled project around. Project controls work in the sense of causing people to pursue local productivity because they regularly repeat the question that appears to most concern management -- even when management really wants something else. The effect of these questions cannot be overcome by less frequent questions about something else. What are we to do? Pay attention to how controls really work. Design cost and schedule reporting systems to cause the action you really want -- optimization at the project level- and to provide the information you really need - information to support projections on this job and estimating on the next. Reduce reporting frequency and level of detail to support these objectives. Measure what matters starting with planning system performance. This will tell you how well you are coordinating action within and between crews. Ask about improvements in workflow reliability and the ability to make work ready. Ask the right questions often and in person. Wednesday, October 16, 2002
Produce Alignment and Trust in the Stories You Tell
One last comment (for now) on story-telling...There is a 'richness' that comes from the diversity of project participants. That richness can be realized, or go unrealized. One key action for project managers is to produce alignment among the diverse participants to have them work in concert with one another. Alignment is produced in our story-telling.
Patrick Lencioni distinguished five dysfunctions of teams. The foundational dysfunction is the absence of trust. There is only one way to build trust; you must talk about trust to build trust. When people trust each other, they cooperate, collaborate, innovate, and learn. When they distrust they argue, shield, preserve, and despair. Hands-off project management doesn't work. Avoidance of conflict doesn't work. Detached objectivity is an illusion. Projects succeed when project leaders engage enthusiastically with their team, shaping the conversation about who they are and what they are up to. In so doing, the project manager produces the foundation of trust that makes all else possible. Tuesday, October 15, 2002
Story-Telling Reforms the Project
I've made a number of references to story-telling as necessary on projects. Yesterday, I spoke of the importance of story-telling to producing alignment. Today, I have another twist to offer. As author Dr. Matthew Budd puts it in the title of his book, You Are What You Say. Dr. Budd wrote about health, well-being, and living a life. Little did he know (or did he?) that he was writing a guide for project leaders.
How is his message pertinent to project leaders? Each of us walks around in an everyday-always conversation about ourselves in our world. We talk to ourselves. We say all kinds of things -- mostly assessments, some positive, many not so positive. We find ourselves saying, "I can do that. I'm good at those things." Or, "That will never work. Those things never do." Projects are challenging. Projects are uncertain. People add to the challenge and the uncertainty with their own private unspoken conversations about themselves and each other. Story-telling is the project leader's opportunity for intervening in the already present mixture of stories on the team. Through story-telling the team begins to acquire a new perspective about themselves and each other. Instead of "This or that won't work" team members see what can be done and where they can take action. I am not promoting happy talk. Nor am I suggesting a kind of pop-psychology. Try this out: catch yourself in your private story about you and your project. Then inquire what others are thinking about themselves in the same situation. You are bound to find a mismatch, often one that will get in the way of the two of you pulling together. John Udell proposed in Telling A Story that there is a place on projects at the "intersection of the messaging and publishing mediums" for the story-teller. He suggests that the story-teller keeps the team together and focussed on the promises of the project. What is there to tell? Tell the stories of ambition, achievement, satisfaction, worthwhileness, and determination. Tell the stories of cooperation, collaboration, learning, and resilience. Tell the stories that unite, bond, and build trust. Tell the stories that dispel, focus, invite, and encourage. Tell the up-coming story of accomplishment. Just tell stories. It is the one avenue available everyday for reshaping the collection of individual realities into a collective reality. Monday, October 14, 2002
When Good Strategies Fail in Implementation
I've been working my way through Mary and Tom Poppendiek's book Lean Development: A Toolkit for Software Development Managers. Chapter Five: Alignment Tools is a very good survey and synthesis of some of the best thinking on how to get projects done. The chapter is well-written and engaging. This primer provides good guidance whether you're doing software development, hardware engineering, or carpentry.
Mary and Tom expose one of the major struggles for organizations. Good strategies fail in implementation. Why? The chapter title says it all -- alignment. Organizations fail to produce it. Mary and Tom propose three tools for getting your team going in the same direction and then keeping them going: professionalism, passion, and signalling and commitment. As is usual throughout the book the authors do a good job sharing their references behind each of their claims. I see managers speak about issues of alignment once thinking that if something has been said then it is so. Align is a verb. It is an action that must be taken throughout the course of the work of teams and projects. I'll add a twist to Mary and Tom's proposal. Leaders and team members use stories to elicit profesionalism, to evoke passion, and as context for coordination. Good strategies fail in implementation when the practice of story-telling is missing. Visit the Archives for more postings |
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