 Reforming Project Management |
||
|
|
||
|
Friday, October 25, 2002
If I Only Had A Brain
An ENR Summit attendee asked for my best advice for conducting planning sessions. The individual was looking for a standard agenda format. I surprised him by saying the quality of the planning is a function of the questions asked by the leaders present. I got the usual, "Huh?" I remembered the following Top Five list I use in coaching project leaders. I offered to send it to him. Only problem is I can't find the business card that goes with the promise! Oh well...I hope you're reading.
What do you do with the above top five list? At your next project planning meeting shift your questions. Make it your goal to ask follow-up questions. Do it in the mood of curiosity not interrogation. Avoid answering your own questions or differing with the answers you get. See what happens. At the end of the session conduct a plus-delta review to get participants' views on what produced value for them and what could produce more value in the future. Focus on one or two of the items from your plus-delta review at the next planning meeting. Thursday, October 24, 2002
Project Controls and Work Sampling: A Potent Combination
Earlier notes on control were more conceptual. This one recounts how I became so suspicious of project controls. I became a consultant when I tried to sell Timelapse™ photographic equipment to contractors to analyze their construction operations. But they didn’t want equipment or to develop the ability to improve operations. They wanted someone to solve some specific problem. One of my first contracts was to help the project management team constructing a new coal fired power plant determine if the installation of the precipitator could be improved, and to figure out why data from two reporting systems was pointing in the opposite directions.
I arrived on site, introduced myself to the boilermakers, and climbed the chimney to record the operation. I watched it all day. The 6-man crew loaded 5 pipes into a skip and climbed the structure to where the skip was unloaded and the pipes installed. Then they climbed down and repeated the process. I knew after the first few cycles that they were spending less than 10% of their time installing pipes, and that another skip and small unloading platform would more than double performance. At 11:45, they left for a half hour lunch and came back at 12:45. This was all interesting and maybe useful. (Later I found the management really weren’t concerned about the precipitator installation process; rather they were sure the boiler makers were leaving early and getting back late.) But the boilermakers weren’t the most interesting thing I saw. At first, I thought that prize would go to a group of laborers moving a stack of lumber, but by 2PM I was convinced it went to the work sampling program because I could always tell when a porta-potty was occupied. Worksampling began 2 months earlier in response to declining productivity. Management was convinced workers were milking the job because they were lazy or dishonest. The rate of decline reflected in cost reports increased after the sampling began. Schedule slippage was growing too. Classic project controls showed things were getting worse, but reports from the sampling program showed workers were spending more time doing productive work. Workers were recorded as doing productive work if they were placing materials in their final position, and received half credit if they were moving materials. As a result, the laborers carried three of four pieces of lumber to the new stack and one on the way back. They had learned this improved the reports on their efforts. An occupied toilet was easy to spot because it had a short piece of pipe, lumber or rebar leaning next to the door. Everybody knew the reporting rules. Don’t go to the bathroom empty handed. The exit interview was interesting. I showed the boilermakers were only doing "productive work" about 10% of the time, they took too long for lunch (one of them told me later, "You can’t get dinged for not working if you aren’t there."), and that a simple reorganization of work could double output. I wish I could say the project turned around because of this effort. They did drop the sampling program but they never could get past their belief that motivation was the problem. Not much happened to brag about. They never bought the photographic equipment – and even if they had, I doubt it would have made much difference. Wednesday, October 23, 2002
Ford Gives River Rouge a Green Coat
Yesterday I mentioned the River Rouge project. Today the NYT published a great article on Ford's revitalization. Here it is Ford Gives River Rouge a Green Coat (Thanks Steve for the lead.)
Single Pie(ce) Flow Yields 125% Increased Productivity
Joe's Lean Diary
5,000 (well, 4,502) Apple PiesTake a break to see what was learned in one fund-raising activity. Joe offers details and comments on his learning. He noted there was an 80-90% productivity improvement. Message to Joe...I thought you were a math major. I calculate a 125% productivity increase! Is Management Possible?
I only wish I asked the question first! Instead, Thomas A. Stewart asked it writing for the last time in his fortnightly web column for Business 2.0 Is Management Possible? Thomas is one of the preeminent thinkers and writers on management and intellectual capital. While he points out the short-comings of the prevalent approaches to managing, he comes squarely down on the side of management is possible.
The publishers of the Harvard Business Review agree. Thomas Stewart joins them as the new editor. Congratulations Thomas! There's more good reading ahead.
Tuesday, October 22, 2002
ENR 2002 Construction Summit
I had the opportunity to participate on a panel discussion this morning at the annual ENR 2002 Construction Summit. Our panel topic was Beta Testing Construction Innovation. Harvey Bernstein, President, CERF (Civil Engineering Research Foundation) moderated the discussion. The six panelists mostly agreed...risk avoidance and consequent litigation, organization silos, and single-project client relationships are significant impediments to innovation. The highlight of the conference for me was an afternoon panel conversation on Ford's redevelopment of the legacy River Rouge factory complex.
River Rouge is where Henry Ford made the advancements in production, design, and labor that made the automobile possible for the general population. Bill Ford, current CEO, decided to redevlop the site following sustainable practices. Bill McDonough, perhaps the father of sustainable architecture and design, was on the panel with three other partners: Ford's facilities manager, the senior manager from the contractor, and a principal from the engineering firm. Also on the panel was a similar partnership for MedCath Health Care. The panel discussed Creating True Partnerships Among Owner/Designer/Contractor. Again there was agreement in the conversation. Here are their summary comments: Audience Participant:The conference finished with a presentation by the head of facilities development for China's 2008 Summer Olympics. (I'll post the URL to the presentation when it is available.) It was quite the day! Monday, October 21, 2002
Somewhere Near Wilmington People Moved to the Center
Riding the Acela Express from Boston to Washington DC this morning I wondered if I could explain my thoughts on the work of projects. (While the train is supposed to travel at 150 MPH, the tracks were under construction throughout much of Conn. The scenery was nice!) Yesterday I mentioned there are two kinds of action on projects. I've tried to simplify those actions to one word or concept for each. For the first I tried making or doing or manipulating, but none are general enough. So moving on I see the second type of action as conversation for coordinating action. But that isn't inclusive enough. The linguistic action of projects includes the assessments we make -- evaluating how well we are doing; it includes the speculating and planning we do; it includes setting goals, assigning roles, establishing rules, and setting standards; it also includes the negotiating, approving, deciding, requesting, promising, and deciding. So you see the trouble I'm having?
We misunderstand value-adding work as transformative: input > process > output. This transformation model doesn't fit software programming, digging a hole, placing concrete, and making decisions. That is all legitimate work of projects. Capturing that works as making and manipulating miss the nature of the action on projects. The nature is not intrinsic; nothing has intrinsic value independent of some customer for the work. The nature of our work has as context the concerns and standards of our customers. Context and value is established in conversation. We don't dig a hole, write a procedure, or solve a problem independent of someone wanting it for furthering their own purposes. And, we don't take the action without promising to do so. Somewhere near Wilmington it hit me. There are the conversations that shape and reshape a future eventually resulting in promises and then there's the work of fulfilling those promises. It takes people to speculate, to make judgements, to request, and to promise. The nature of projects is the human-ness. Put people at the center& they make the promises and they fulfill them. Sunday, October 20, 2002
Running on Rails: Two Kinds of Action
I had the pleasure of visiting a construction site last week in Milwaukee. It is a good sized project -- over $100 million -- to add on to a hospital. The construction site was well-organized. People were quite busy and working cooperatively. The project is approaching the two-year mark -- on time and on budget. How do they do that? They understand projects involve two kinds of action.
We generally understand the 'real work' of projects (value-adding) to be that which touches material or produces something. These people in Milwaukee understand an equally important work is linguistic action. What do I mean? All deliberate action between two or more people involves assessing, requesting, and promising. Each week the 17+ trades foremen come together to plan with each other what they will have their crews do in the up-coming week. The meeting takes the same form from one week to the next. They start by reviewing the current week's planning performance. How much of what they said they would do did they get done? For every case that they didn't complete as promised they perform a five why analysis so they can investigate the source of the plan failure. They follow this conversation by reviewing the next six weeks of the plan looking particularly at those issues (constraints) that could keep them from performing as desired. People step-up to address the constraints to the plan making promises. Finally, the foremen say what they will do for the coming week. Negotiations occur to resolve where two crews may want to work in the same area at the same time (much like two programmers both wanting to check out code at the same time). They end the meeting with a new plan for the coming week based on the informed commitments of the people closest to the work. I often hear people say meetings are a waste. The 'real work' happens outside of the meeting. But not with this group. They take these conversations -- linguistic action -- very seriously. And well they should. When asked how the project was going, the project superintendent replied, "It's running on rails." Visit the Archives for more postings |
 Reference Papers
|
||
| |||
