In reading over my last few Project e-Tips I realized I only shared four of the Five Big Ideas Reshaping AEC Project Delivery. I intend to write a paper on it. In the meantime I hope you can make sense and then put these five big ideas to work on your project.
None of the ideas are earth-shattering. The power comes in designing the practices on your projects with all five. Go back and take another look at #s 24 - 27 in the e-Tip Archive.
The Project Reformer's e-Tip of the Week
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030: Intentionally Build Relationships on Projects
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People on projects often come together as strangers. We can't be learning, collaborating, optimizing the project, or making commitments without a relationship built on trust, respect, appreciation, care for each other, and practices of commitment-making. The faster project team members become friends the sooner the project will be on track for success.
Building relationships is a matter of intentionality and a few simple practices. I see far too many situations where the urgencies of the project or another project get in the way of taking the steps to produce sufficient relationships to meet the challenges of the project. Whether you are a leader or team member see to it that you take time up front to build your team. What does that take? Try these five steps:
- Explore each others' personal intentions and ambitions. Projects offer sufficient opportunities to take care of individual needs and desires. We just need to find out what they are. Then bring those intentions into alignment with the promise of the project.
- Cultivate practices of commitment-making. At the very first opportunity begin practices of making promises in front of each other. This practice provides a factual basis for making assessments of trust-worthiness and care for the team.
- Make it your habit to acknowledge and appreciate team members. Become a mutual admiration society. High performing teams are characterized as environments where people are acknowledged at least once every seven days for the talents, efforts, and contributions each team member brings.
- Foster an environment for healthy conflict. Encourage team members to express alternate views. Even in the face of agreement have someone create a different perspective.
- Make the project setting a place where people can be their authentic selves without fear of judgement or mockery. Granting each other their legitimacy is the basis for the healthiest of relationships.
Simple practices? Yes. And powerful practices for enriching relationships.
The Project Leaders' Studio™ |
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©2004 Hal Macomber | weblog.halmacomber.com | e-Tip Archive | PDF | Submit Tip
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I'm still waiting on some readers' proposals...
posted by Hal at 10:58 PM
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Kudos to Brian Michael Kennemer!! He just published in Projectified an add-in macro for MS Project that calculates Percent of Plan (Promises) Complete (PPC). This is the key measure of planning reliability. Projects done on a lean basis have PPCs that are above 85%. Usual projects are under 50%. Due to the phenomenon of dependence and variation low PPC leads to projects that are late and over budget.
Get Brian's PPC Macro. It's a quick add-in to your MS Project schedules. Now the important question? How do you improve PPC? Start by reviewing these three Project e-Tips:
Then put a process in place for making work ready. That process must address and resolve the constraints that keep people from completing a task. Adopt a process that allows people to only start work that is in a condition to be finished. Finally, get project performers to promise completion.
You now know have a measurement tool and a practice for improving planning reliability. Get on with it!
posted by Hal at 12:13 AM
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Hold onto to your hats! Mark Zweig, as usual, freely speaks his views. He just did so in a webcast on project performance for AE firms. Brian Driscoll offered some highlights of the webcast in this today's ZweigLetter. I'll recap the "misconception", Mark's view, and then offer my commentary.
The firm's performance is the sum of its project performance.
I (Mark) say that's wrong. You might be making money on every job, but if you're not doing enough of them, you can go broke. (W)hen firms find out what their real overhead is, they find that they're not doing enough.
Mark makes the case for company management practices that are more encompassing than a simple roll-up of project performance. "Of course!" you might say. But my experience with particularly the small and medium size AE firms is they are missing the tools to take the whole-company view.
Firms should have minimum (profitability) standards for what jobs they can take on.
It's naive to think you can just not do work of certain sizes for good clients. Look at the totality of the relationship and how well you do across all of the client's work.
I've been on both sides of this one. I've proposed minimum standards for taking on construction work. I've also argued that any margin is good margin. Mark proposes that we look at the whole of our relationship with a client to evaluate profitability. And I'll add, do that on a regular basis.
It's the job of the project manager to tell everyone what the budget, scope, deadlines, and so on are.
I (Mark) say that is wrong. The project manager's responsibility is to make sure information is available to everyone, but firms need to place the onus on the individuals to seek the information out.
Knowing budget and schedule are important. Very important. And both change on most projects. The one person who knows about those changes is the project manager. Just updating some system, as good as it may be, doesn't guarantee that team members will learn about it in a timely way. Yes we want people on our teams who are inquiring. But don't leave it to chance that team members will learn what you need them to learn. Cultivate people who are responsible to find out what is going on AND hold your project managers accountable for wide open and timely communications among the team.
Project managers should be the front-line bill collectors for firms.
I really disagree with this one. It's not the best use of their talent. Some will do it, but the majority of them won't do a very good job.
Yes, it is tough. And late payment can be associated with dissatisfaction. There's no better way I know than to ask directly, "Is there something that you are dissatisfied with?" When the answer is "No," you can then make a request for your client to step in to see that you are paid on time. If the answer is "Yes," then you have the opportunity in that moment to address the dissatisfaction following which you can ask to be paid.
Project management training will improve performance.
I (Mark) don't know where the data is that supports this conclusion because I sure as heck haven't seen it. I see a lot of bad training out there that makes absolutely no difference in how project managers do their jobs. I'm not saying all project management training is a waste of money, but I will say that a lot of it is.
I agree with Mark. While Mark doesn't say why some project management training is a waste, I will. Much of the project management training that we see today conforms to conventional wisdom. The prevailing wisdom is motivationist and controlling. Computer systems of course conform to the conventional wisdom, else they wouldn't be selling. The reductionist deterministic behavioral approach is bankrupt. And therefore all the training that is based on it doesn't improve performance. If you're interested in some training that will work, then look towards Scrum and lean project delivery. The Scrum approach was designed for software development. The lean approach has been used successfully for a variety of AEC projects. Both will work for AE projects.
So, the folks at ZweigWhite want to know, "Does conventional wisdom work for you?" Leave you comments on this weblog or write Brian Driscoll.
posted by Hal at 6:58 AM
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Safety Thursday
Work Injury Free
Construction safety is a community concern. Too often we mis-order our priorites. The following letter to the editor does a better job than I could in making the case. I'm reprinting it here for your convenience.
Billings Gazette, Voice of the Reader,
Sunday, July 11, 2004
Golden Pen Award: Thanks to Shawn Elvsaas for a worker's perspective on road construction safety.
Night Construction Hazardous Work
The death of Richard Dean Roebling on the morning of June 30, was a tragic event. It was also a totally preventable one. I have been paving streets and highways in the state for over 15 years and have seen the number of close calls increase with each year. It was only a matter of time before something as tragic as this occurred.
In the construction industry, we are constantly being told to do things as safely as possible, yet job planners are doing the exact opposite. Traffic control is set up for the benefit of the motorist, not for the safety of the people in the work zone. More and more jobs are done at night, when the number of drunken drivers increases substantially. All of this is done so somebody can get home, to work or to the store a few minutes earlier. As a result, some construction workers don't make it home at all.
Accidents and deaths will only continue to increase until city and state planners decide to consider the safety of the people working in the construction zone, not the inconvenience of those driving through them. Work needs to be done during the daylight hours, traffic needs to be detoured when possible, and police officers and highway patrol need to be on duty in construction zones whenever traffic is allowed to drive through. These things may cost a little more money and take a little more time, but what's time and money when you are talking about someone's life. I can think of one family that would give all of the time and money in the world.
Shawn Elvsaas
Billings
Thank you Shawn for putting it so well. Readers, please share this with others.
posted by Hal at 12:44 PM
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Reforming Project Management
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