 Reforming Project Management |
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Saturday, April 05, 2003
Model Project Managers
Model Project Managers, Dr. O.P. Kharbanda writing for Gantthead.com. Dr Kharbanda points to Mahatma Ghandi, Henry Ford, and Benjamin Franklin as models of project managers. One thing that made all three models for project managers is their outlooks on life:
One step is enough for me! and The customer is king!All three can be characterized having a lifelong perseverance accompanied by an everyday patience. Dr Kharbanda promises more references to these three great men in his upcoming series on project management. Friday, April 04, 2003
Build Listening Systems for Project Success
Project success depends on team members performing well. Project managers can do their part by developing their listening skills (rather than their persuasion skills). Developing skill at listening takes time and practice. Dr. Rick Brommelje offers a little help each week in The Listening Leader Newsletter. I've reprinted this week's issue as a sample. Give it a try for a few months...subscribe.
Listening-Based InnovationContinuing success comes from value-creating innovation stimulated by disciplined listening. Occasional surveys are insufficient. Organizations need to build listening systems that capture, summarize, and disseminate the unmet dreams and unfulfilled wants of multiple customer groups, including existing, prospective, and internal customers (employees). Listening systems uncover fresh marketplace intelligence, help guide decision making, and nurture creative thinking. Effective listening systems involve both formal and informal methods, conversations with customers, the use of trend data to reveal changing patterns, the distribution of relevant information to all employees, and active discussion and application of findings in work groups. Listening leads to learning, which sets the stage for innovation. Innovation is more likely when employees are well informed about the customer, unafraid to try something new, and committed to the organization's success. Charles Schwab uses multiple methods to listen for customers' dreams that often start with the phrase, "I know it's not possible, but I wish....." Schwab's top management travels extensively to interact with customers in informal settings. Branches host monthly customer receptions, and at least once a week in different cities. Schwab holds town meetings to hear employees' ideas, suggestions, and concerns. Gary Hoover, who has created three innovative businesses (Bookstop, Hoover's Handbooks, and TravelFest) claims that the customers always get what they want. It is just a matter of who gives it to them when. Companies that sustain success continually search for new ways to create value for customers. They choose to lead rather than follow, to act rather than wait, to heed the customer instead of the competitor. Source: Leading for the Long Term, Leonard Berry, Leader to Leader Thursday, April 03, 2003
Agile Principles, Good Practice for Any Project
The latest issue of Projects @ Work (March/April) has done a good job exploring the concern for collaboration on project teams. One article offers a summary view of an agile approach to projects. (This issue will be available online later this month.) Get your free subscription.
File Under Agile: Seven principles for keeping your software projects from bogging down, Ed Hartnett
Wednesday, April 02, 2003
Learn to Implement the Last Planner on Your Project
Thinking of implementing lean on your projects?
Take advantage of the workshop Implementing the Last Planner System™ offered by the Manufacturing Assistance Partnership and the Lean Construction Institute. The workshop is set for Las Vegas, Nevada, on April 24-25, 2003. Details are available at http://www.mapnv.org/events.html#LeanConstruction - or by calling Gene Lazaroff at 702-651-4876. Tuesday, April 01, 2003
Context is Everything for Managing Projects Successfully
The editors at Project Management World Today argue in their April editorial The Case of the Missing Domain that project managers struggle in a context-free project management process.
When business people take an interest in projects they ask different questions from project managers. Any manager in a business organization these days will ask "(W)hen will this project be completed, and how much will it cost when it is?" as a start, but will also ask: "(H)ow will this project meet it's business goals, what risks are there to the business process? What value is delivered when we're done here? What does done mean?"Those questions provide the context for shaping future action. The author questions the relevance of project management that is context-free. Missing is the acknowledgment that a "process" oriented approach is not sufficient. Putting the processes of PMBoK® to work in a context is not only necessary it is mandatory for the profession. But what context? Software development? Construction? Hard goods manufacturing? Aerospace? All have unique context dependent needs.Concluding the PMBoK® provides little value to the process of software development. The editorial argues that practitioners want methods but aren't finding them. (A)s a non-method, PMBoK® leaves the PM professional without the tools to move forward. Methods are the means to problem solving. Without methods, the discipline of project management is simply a list of processes - it is context free.People will continue to translate knowledge into methods and practice with or without the PMI. Monday, March 31, 2003
Lean Project Delivery Rejects Cartesian Thinking
There's been quite the discussion of Koskela's and Howell's papers in the NewGrange listserv group. Unfortunately, there's no archive of the discussion that you can read. I'll just say that people have very strong opinions about the value (or lack) of the K&H papers. The participants of the discussion group are experienced, well-versed, project professionals. One member is the leading author of the PMBOK®. After four days of debate, argument, sniping, and not listening to one another (IMO), I couldn't stay on the sidelines any longer. The following is my letter to the group. (Sorry for the length.)
Email to NewGrange. Subj: Re: Lean Construction and Traditional PMI don't know where to start...so how 'bout I jus' offer a "stream of unconsciousness" (as one participant characterized my blogging) without the [snips] (references to specific postings). I can echo many arguments on both (all) sides. I learned in Engineering Economics that one can justify many investments against a poor current case. Business is in a project age as Claude Emond puts it, yet our company systems, our formal education, and our vernacular all harken to days of the industrial revolution. The usual case in companies I see is projects that are poorly initiated...unclear objectives, no one acting as a customer, late to staff, competing demands for team members, and piss-poor project leadership. The project uses some form of project software (MS Project or P3) operated by a computer jockey often detached from the team. We inappropriately characterize this situation as "traditional PM". It is bad management. Period. Having said that, there are plenty of examples of well-managed companies, who take care initiating projects, providing appropriate staffing, and competent leadership who are dissatisfied with the results they get with other than agile approaches. (I don't want to get shot for calling it "traditional".) You may all be surprised to learn that the leading companies using the Last Planner were already leading companies in their markets. When asked why did they try something so different from the status quo they'll tell you their customers were dissatisfied with the waste; their investors were dissatisfied with the risks and returns; employees were burning out; and along the way people died building buildings. [pause while I confront that reality again] Even the well-managed firms deliver projects late, over budget, missing some key aspect of customer satisfaction, and the employees get hurt. We've been facing this for decades, centuries, millenniums. The broad population in the industry is resigned about those conditions. Did you know that construction represents 10% of the industrial workforce and 40% of the industrial accidents? Can you guess what percentage of those accidents are preventable? OSHA will tell you over 80%. [let's pause again] I won't go into the history of lean construction nor the more generalized lean project delivery. Suffice it to say it has its roots in the Toyota Production System which traces its roots to Henry Ford. Let me just say that the leading companies practicing a lean approach to project delivery were already getting their projects done on time. Not always on budget, but on time. They were already the safe companies enjoying experience modifier rates 30% or more better than the average. These firms are now delivering one project after the other on time or early AND at or below budget AND safer than ever before. The largest Danish contractor has been keeping records. They've found comparing 500,000 hours reported on lean projects with 500,000 hours reported on projects doing it the conventional way they are getting their projects done earlier (one to two months), cheaper (anywhere from 10% to 20%) and much safer (over 60% fewer lost time accidents). All of this is related. I won't try to present the explanation in this five-minute email. Koskela and Howell spent considerable time writing their papers and still they have trouble explaining. Suffice it to say something very different is going on when projects are delivered in a lean fashion. Might complex adaptive systems offer an explanation? Yes, but still incomplete. Might lean thinking principles show the phenomena? Only partially. Linguistic action? That, too. CCPM? I wish. Here's my hunch...yes, it's a hunch, or maybe just an inkling...our deterministic reductionist approach to projects is the limiting condition. New theory must embrace both the uncertainty that is the project milieu and the unpredictable, serendipitous, richness of the human condition when interacting one with the other. Call me an optimist. New theory will lead us to easier, more rewarding projects in the project age. Sunday, March 30, 2003
Project Portfolio Management
Project (Portfolio) Management...Like Herding Cats? by Glen B. Alleman. Glen is a regular contributor to PM World Today writing on Information Technology projects. Check out his other articles when you visit this one.
While many of us project managers struggle with our own project, firms often need to manage collections of projects. Glen has been writing about how to think about and organize an approach that can be successful. Glen writes, "Before projects can be ready for (project) portfolio management (PPM) they must possess certain attributes."
The Foundation of Portfolio ManagementGlen says PPM depends on four concurrent processes.
Stick with this guy. He's thoughtful, practical, and working at the edge of emerging theory and practice. Visit the Archives for more postings |
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