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I have another writing project that readers may be interested in. John Satta and I are writing a weblog CoachBlog™. John was invited by Thomas Leonard, founder of Coachville, to explore the role of blogging for coaches. John also has his own weblog Yellow Sticky.

This week I set out to show syndicated learning to the coaching community by writing a five-day tutorial on reliable promising. While it is not very ambitious, the series shows most of the elements of syndicated learning. (I'll comment more on that at the end of the series.) Do the reliable promising tutorial for a boost in reliability on your project. Or, invite others to do so!

In the coming weeks John and I will explore how one can coach through blogging. Should be fun. Stop by and subscribe. Please leave a comment if you do the exercises.
posted by Hal at 10:31 AM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

While going about my day, I recalled two other observations about the jobsite and project team I visited last week.

• There was tremendous trust among the members of the team and the extended team. People shared what they were doing. They shared their materials. They shared their opinions (even in the presence of a visitor and the COO). And they were quick to make offers to each other. If you don't know how important trust is to the success of a project team, then try distrust!
• The team had their attention on results. They were not just going through the motions of a weekly planning exercise. They kept the concerns for the up-coming week present in their conversation.

BTW, I think this team came together late spring - early summer. While some of the team members have worked together on other projects, the mix of subcontractors was new. These folks understand that the quality of their relationships matter to the success of the project. They continue to give it their attention.
posted by Hal at 11:48 PM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

My friend Joe (Learning About Lean) asked me to offer more observations and assessments of my jobsite visit last week. I haven't discussed this with the project team, so out of courtesy I will offer some general comments based on my visits with them and with a number of projects in the last month.

Greg Howell and I regularly visit well-run projects. It seems that only people who are doing relatively well are sincere about their intentions to improve. There's a book that expresses that sentiment, Better Makes Us Best. The team I visited had that attitude. The members ask questions, invite assessments, and reach out to each other for help. I can't stress the importance of this enough. I'll take a rookie team who asks for help over a know-it-all experienced team any day.

Well-organized jobsites and high project reliability go together. The site I visited was clean and organized. While I didn't inquire how long particular material had been on site, there wasn't much lying around. This is consistent with lean principles, specifically eight wastes. Now when I see a well-organized site I expect to see a project that is on time and on budget.

Planning is an everyday practice. I was particularly struck by the negotiating underway last week. I am used to seeing people trying to reschedule today's activities based on what didn't get done or went wrong yesterday. The negotiating that was going on had to do with work to be performed in the coming weeks. There are two significant points to that:

1. The team saw the specifics of the up-coming look-ahead plan as just one approach to meeting the milestones as promised to the customer;
2. Planning is an on-going collaborative process that always includes those people executing the plan.

The team in Colorado and every other team taking a lean approach see planning and execution as tightly coupled or extensions of each other. This is unlike the description offered by PMI and in general practice where planning, execution, and control are seen as separate functions performed by different people.

One last observation...I noticed a wonderful mood among the project team. Some people might say, "Of course! The project is on schedule and on budget." Sure, that helps. Or, is their mood contributing to the good results? Time and again I see the project leaders of high performing teams taking the time to shape the mood of the team. The leaders do this in the stories they tell. One way of doing this is with a project k-log. I wrote about this October 8th Project Klogs: Changing Paradigms. An even better way is by being with the project team everyday. Not only are you in a position to tell the story, you are part of it.
posted by Hal at 3:33 PM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

Builders Seek to Demolish Inefficiency:
Work is Completed More Quickly With Better Project Management

The subtitle reminds me of those usual local newspaper articles, Stores Crowded before the Holidays and Dog Bites Man. In spite of the title, the article is quite well-written. The publication is available only by subscription. The article appeared in the December issue of Lean Manufacturing Advisor. The editors at Productivity Press interviewed leaders of companies adopting a lean approach to construction projects along with Greg Howell, my partner and Executive Director of the Center for Innovation in Project and Production Management, d.b.a. Lean Construction Institute. Instead of offering a summary, I'll provide some of Paul Reiser's quotes. Paul is Vice President for Production and Innovation at The Boldt Company. Take note of Paul's title. I rarely see construction company titles that refer to production, let alone innovation.

It’s not uncommon for our best lean projects to be characterized by 20 percent schedule improvement, significant cost savings, and highly satisfied customers.

Last year we compared concrete productivity on lean projects versus non-lean projects. The results indicated a 25 percent improvement in concrete productivity. The improvement may not be completely attributed to lean, but we do recognize that eager adopters of lean on our construction projects also tend to be innovative thinkers when it comes to operations design. When you combine lean production with innovative operations design, the result is highly reliable and productive project delivery.

(The Last Planner™ System) forces people to get together once a week for an hour and do collaborative planning. They make commitments to each other based on pull. When we meet the next week, we track the reliability of our planning, how many of those commitments did we actually meet — the plan percent complete.

One of the biggest benefits is a much higher level of communication and awareness. It becomes a highly collaborative process. There’s a new feeling of communication and participation for the people that are actually doing the work. We’ve empowered people on the job sites to make decisions.

Because of the success we’ve had at the job site production level, we’re trying to drive lean further into the design phase. Traditional project delivery is fragmented. Design takes place in a design office and the drawings are thrown over the wall, so to speak, to the contractor. We say it shouldn’t have been designed this way, and we throw the contracts back over the wall.

We are mapping our job support processes including job setup, cost forecasting, payroll, accounts payable, purchasing, tool and material handling, and more. Value stream mapping these processes has revealed 30 percent to 60 percent waste in specific areas.

Along with the article, Productivity included some of the planning documents Boldt uses and a mini-case study Lean is the Right Formula for Rice Chemistry Building detailing Linbeck Construction's early experience adopting lean project management -- another good read.

Maybe we should get used to seeing the headline Work is Completed More Quickly With Better Project Management replacing the now usual Construction Project Delayed.
posted by Hal at 9:26 AM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

Last week I observed the Last Planner™ System in operation at a good-sized construction project by The Neenan Company. After touring the jobsite I was able to sit-in on their weekly work planning meeting. The team was doing quite well keeping the project on schedule and on budget.

The meeting took the usual form:

• Reviewing last week's performance,
• Exploring and recording the reasons for plan failure
• Examining the look-ahead plan for the readiness of up-coming work, and
• Committing to next week's weekly work plan.

I was particularly impressed with the conversation. Participants freely commented, questioned, and negotiated commitments. Tasks were clear and had due dates. These folks knew how to make reliable promises.

At the end of the meeting I made the following suggestions to the project manager:

1. Post a graph of weekly PPC performance,
2. Post a pareto chart of the reasons for plan variance, and
3. Add visual cues to the milestone plan hanging on the wall.

I look forward to a return visit in the spring.
posted by Hal at 12:05 PM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

Here's a synopsis of the Projects, Planning, and Promising lecture at CSU. I started, rather than finishing, with my recommendations for improving project performance. Later, we discussed the theory behind the recommendations.

1. Assign accountability for making work ready; don't proceed with work that is not ready to start and finish.
2. Ask performers (or their supervisors) to reliably promise each assignment (task) on the upcoming weekly work plan.
3. Adopt a planning practice that emphasizes learning.

The recommendations provoked numerous questions. They were a great segue to the discussion of theory. Many of you long-time readers can probably guess what I said. Here goes:

• Projects happen in the future. The future is uncertain and unknowable. Ready work that is promised by performers results in significantly higher project reliability.
• Consistent with an uncertain future, act at the last responsible moment. This allows the project manager and the team to incorporate into the plan what is discovered, the developing skills of project participants, and the evolving conditions of satisfaction of the customer.
• Projects are performed by people. While managing people is often a project manager's greatest challenge, people offer the project manager even greater possibilities. People observe; people judge; people learn; and people innovate. Leverage the value of people by including them in the planning on a continuing basis.

Bolivar Senior, Professor of Construction Management and sponsor for the CSU event, noted in a comment to the previous posting about the consistency of the students' questions and comments. To that I'll add the students were certainly no pushovers. Their questions were direct and challenging and their comments showed they were well-grounded by experience.

Thank you all at CSU for the opportunity to share my thinking.
posted by Hal at 9:33 PM | link  |   |   | Google It!  | Email This  |

 

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