It's been awhile since I've published a Project e-Tip. The coming five e-Tips will be follow the themes that I see are shaping the work we do. This first one tightly couple learning with action serves as the basis of working in a lean fashion. Take time to explore what it can mean for you, your team, and your customer.h
The Project Reformer's e-Tip of the Week
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024: Tightly Couple Learning with Action
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We learned from Toyota not to produce in large batches. Doing so creates wastes in storage, in tracking, in rework, in movement, and in space. Toyota's goal is single-piece flow at the signal of the customer. But why is it so important to do just one at a time. The answer is we want to learn from each action we take. Toyota sees it as the opportunity to test and re-test their hypothesis of how to do work effectively. Here's five ways you can begin adopting the principle tightly couple learning with action on your projects:
- Meet at the end of each day for just 5 minutes with the last planners on your project to give them the opportunity to report on the work they finished for the day as they had promised to do. Identify at that time any reasons for not finishing promised work. Replan as necessary.
- Do detailed planning for short horizons (6 weeks). Review the outcome, then do more detailed planning.
- Conduct a plus-delta review at the end of each planning meeting. Start the next meeting by referring back to the last review. Select one item from that list for focus during the meeting.
- Have a conversation with the whole team on something that needs improvement. Take action based on an 80% complete solution. Try it out. Review the results. Then create an 80% solution for the balance of the issue.
- Attack the delays on your project. Explore with your team what keeps them from more closely coupling one person's work with another's work. Do an experiment. Learn. Re-do the experiment.
Put these to work on your project immediately. Start by discussing this Project e-Tip with your team. You might want to create a contest with them to see who can generate the most ways for coupling learning with action.
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©2004 Hal Macomber | weblog.halmacomber.com | e-Tip Archive | PDF | Submit Tip
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I'd like to hear your experience working with this. Please leave a comment or send me an email.
posted by Hal at 12:48 AM
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So much is made of picking a project team. But what about the rest of us who get who we get. What are we to do? In the latest article offering advice on forming teams, Kathleen Melymuka writing for Computer World urges project managers to build a balanced team in How to Pick a Project Team (Tech) Skills Are Only the Beginning.
A great project team requires more than technical skills. It takes the right mix of "soft" skills, personalities and attitudes to gel and achieve results.
- Fewer Is Better -- Small project teams perform better than large ones due in part to the few interpersonal relationships/
- Attitude Counts -- Look for people with positive attitudes
- Diversity Lowers Risk -- Different styles and perspectives counterbalance
- Familiarity Breeds Action -- Teams take time to work effectively
- Availability Trumps Everything -- Who's available can determine the outcome
- Leverage Matters -- Establish a relationship with customers and those who have staff for your project
Ok. Good advice for people who can put their teams together. So, what do we do when we come together as strangers? Project managers can create those attributes among the people who come together. It starts by publicly acknowledging the situation.
- Big projects require big teams. Can you reduce the number of members on your team? Maybe not, if you've contracted with a large number of companies. But you can operate in smaller groupings.
- We all have the experience of the contagiousness of attitudes, both good attitudes and bad attitudes. Keep an ear out for signs of attitudes that are not good for the circumstances of your team. Intervene at the earliest opportunity.
- While diversity may lower risk, ya got what ya got. Take the opportunity to explore the strengths and talents of the people who show up. Offer assignments that put those talents to best use.
- Projects may not be long enough for people to become effective team mates when we come together as strangers. But, it only takes three actions from the leader to accelerate the process: publicly explore intentions, cultivate commitment-making, and engage the group in short daily conversations.
- People are available or they're not. But don't be a victim of that. Engage in everyday practices for readying the upcoming work. See that all wherewithal is in place including the people to perform the task.
- Getting what or who you want is a long term strategy. When people know you as a project manager who takes care of the people on the project, then you will have people clamoring to be on your project. There's no greater leverage than that.
- The author and her respected interviewees encourage you to hold out for the people you want and need to do your project. If you can do that, great! Otherwise, create that situation among the people who show up.
While it is the special case where we can choose our whole team, we often can pick some of our team members. Even on low-bid construction projects we can choose from the available staff. But building a performing team requires skills for taking a group of strangers and turning them first into friends, and then into partners.
posted by Hal at 11:58 PM
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Reforming Project Management
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