 Reforming Project Management |
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Saturday, October 25, 2003
Don't Use Percent Complete
Don't yell at me. I'm just quoting Johanna. (But, I do agree with her!) Johanna has this crazy idea of using inch-pebbles for tracking project performance. It's a play on the word milestone. She claims that percent complete gives a misleading view of a project. The calculation is either based on effort applied versus planned effort, or just a plain SWAG. As Johanna proposes a more useful way is to track the percent of tasks completed versus total tasks planned. You only take credit for finished work. The idea is to break the milestone or phase down into discrete (2-day) tasks that can be monitored. Most of the time this must be done by milestone or project phase. Still you can't know the total tasks before the project finishes. The usual project is emergent. It unfolds. Additionally, there are ad hoc tasks that can be more critical to the project success than something planned at the beginning of the project or phase. Inch-pebbles alone won't provide confidence. For over 10 years the members of the Lean Construction Institute have been using a similar measure of project success. It is known by the We still have to answer the real question: Will this project finish as promised?Since we've grown not to trust the answer to this question, we try to develop our own opinion by watching percent complete. But as Johanna explains, "After you've done 90% of the project, you have the other 90% to do." Friday, October 24, 2003
Indifference, Inertia, and Insight
I love reading the columnists at Industry Week. I subscribe to the IW newsletters so not to miss them. This one just in: Continuous Improvement -- Harness The Passion, by David Drickhamer. Drickhamer wrote about what he discovered while looking at the service industry. Insight: People care and they are frustrated. How has manufacturing addressed this? According to Drickhamer, "as frequently happens," they change management. (N)ew blood with a "passion for excellence," a keep-it-simple strategy, as well as a willingness to find and adopt best practices. The new managers recognized the obvious truth that someone somewhere in the manufacturing universe had already solved every problem that they would ever encounter, and that they in fact had a lot to learn. I suggest we can't afford that approach, particularly our project managers. For the most part, companies already have the talent they need to do their projects successfully. It's the practices, measurements, and focus that must change. PMs can learn a new role and the few new skills to play that role. Then project team members will do as Drickhamer says they already know is needed from them: (E)veryone in this organization shares an understanding that they need to improve every day if the company's going to be successful in its markets We will break the pattern of inertia when PMs play the role of project leader. p.s. Arrived safely in Colorado after just two days of driving. Got to Gary Indiana on Wed nite. Arrived in Greeley, Colorado late last nite. My son is now off to the mountains. Have a successful competitive season Mike! Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Project Leader Studio™
So eventually we got the message. We designed a program that acknowledges the circumstances of project managers. They are interrupted constantly. We do our work with them primarily over the phone. Really! Take a look at the Project Leader Studio program description. There's a good chance we are delaying the start by one week to accommodate 5 people from one company. That creates an opportunity for others. We still have room for a few more people. If you write Greg Howell he will send you a link to a document describing why he and I are doing this program. In the meantime, I'm taking a road trip with my oldest son. (Why not? It's been 5 months since the road trip with my youngest son.) He's headed to Steamboat Springs, CO for the winter. If you want to speak with me about our project leader development program, Greg will know how to reach me. Monday, October 20, 2003
Zweig Letter Articles Available
My first Zweig Letter article, Strangers, Friends, and Partners, is now available on this site. I've added a page to this website for listing articles with summaries. Look for the Articles link in the navigation bar above. I've posted other articles along with a place-holder for the article published today in the Zweig Letter, Head-Banging in the A/E Industry. You can read the summary until I publish the full article here on November 1. So what is the Zweig Letter? It's the weekly newsletter from Zweig White, "...the largest, most diverse organization devoted exclusively to serving the needs of design and construction firms." View a sample issue. Sunday, October 19, 2003
One Page Project Management with Tribute to Fernando Flores
Awhile back I ran across a book authored by Riaz Khadem and Robert Lorber titled, One Page Management: How to Focus on the Right Things and Manage with One Page of Meaningful Information. If you are a One Minute Manager® fan, then you might remember Lorber as the co-author with Ken Blanchard of Putting the One Minute Manager® to Work. One Page Management was first published in 1989 and then revised in 1998. The book appears to be out of print, although used copies are available from Amazon. The possibility of one page management (OPM) is quite seductive. Imagine...with one piece of paper you could manage your department, the company, even your project. The truth is OPM as described by the authors is really about three one-page reports that provide a means for bringing focus to the management of ones own accountabilities, ones direct reports, and the efforts of people in the organization. Everyone in the organization will have either one or three pages. That could be one big stack of paper! The book is written in the typical one-minute parable style. There's a mysterious Infoman that just shows up or calls when needed. The other characters never learn his name, nor how to contact him. Sure, it's hokey! But, the book is a fast read and it offers enough detail to adopt OPM. At less than $10 delivered, you will get good value. So I got to wondering...how could a OPM approach work on projects? And could it address the central issues of projects? As I explored the topic I began to conclude that the one page approach supports the role of management as offered by Fernando Flores in his PhD dissertation Management and Communication in the Office of the Future, p 56, Univ. of CA, Berkeley, 1982. Management is that process of openness, listening, and eliciting commitments, which includes a concern for articulating and activating the network of commitments, primarily produced through promises and requests, allowing for the autonomy of the productive units. The everyday issues for all projects are the same. What are we here to do? Who will do what by when? And how are we doing? I would have three sections to my one-page focus report for addressing those everyday questions.
I can see updating this one page as often as everyday. Section One provides the on-going context of the project. Having it in front of the managers and the team members everyday keeps the promise to the client from sliding into the background and helps bring coherence to the various interests of the team members. Section Two would change most often. The team would be updating it for coordinating with one another and for a continuing practice of planning. Section Three both reminds team members of the interest in learning and is the mechanism for sharing learning in the group. Each section would also include a tracking indicator showing project trends. The construction industry has the practice of creating a daily report either by the site superintendent or project manager. The information has been standardized by the use of software packages. Most systems ask for data on weather, number and type of labor on the job, equipment in use, along with some notation of special events. This kind of daily report is not what I've been writing about. One page management is a guiding mechanism for conducting conversations among project team members and preparing those team members to conduct themselves both in coordination with others and as individuals. Used in this way, OPM becomes the instrument for the ongoing articulation and activation of the network of commitments. The one page approach might be well-suited to a weblog using a template for structuring the content and a categorization scheme for later mining some intelligence. This kind of blog would be particularly helpful for the distributed team. A year ago I wondered Are Weblogs Tools for Business? How about Projects? then I proposed a Specification for Project Weblogs followed by a posting Project Weblogs Going Mainstream. This one page approach looks more promising to me than my take on the subject back then. Who's up for trying this out? Let me know. I'll work with you by phone, email, or IM to help make it happen. Visit the Archives for more postings |
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