 Reforming Project Management |
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Thursday, February 17, 2005
Excavation Safety
Trenches must meet at least one of the following conditions:
Read Safety Everyday's construction safety in the news sideblog. Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Watch Out for the Toolheads
When talking about lean this and lean that, so much attention is given to the tools -- 7 wastes, kanban, kaizen, kaikaku, SMED, etc. -- rather than the tool users. John Seddon cautions us to Watch Out for the Toolheads. John makes his living helping service companies adopt lean practices. While the general idea of lean travels easily among many industries, the methods of lean production don't. John provides an approach that can make your service company lean. He calls it The Vanguard Method. The purpose of lean is to increase capacity by designing a system that optimally responds to customer demand. John does a wonderful job describing what it means to be lean and how production and services are different. He does not go into projects. However, you won't find a better primer on lean than John's article Watch Out for the Toolheads. This article is a keeper. He goes to great extent to describe what is lean and what is not lean. I haven't read a more concise and informative document to introduce you to the basics of the lean approach. You'll learn about fail-safing, just-in-time, 5S (visual management), and the history of lean. Don't hesitate. Get your own copy now. Monday, February 14, 2005
Project Management Sound of Vision Podcast
Effern, one of my readers, has been writing a weblog titled The Vision Thing on the topics of business, process, and management. Effern interviewed three project management bloggers, Johanna Rothman: Managing Product Development, Clarke Ching: I Think Not, Baby Puppy, and me for a podcast series he calls The Sound of Vision. With all my travel last week I was just able to connect to listen to the podcast. Effern interviewed us separately then patched together a program. I am quite surprised how well it came out. Each of us spoke for about 20 mins on our perspective of project management. You'll find three complementary approaches. Have a listen -- put a voice to the online ramblings -- then get over to each of the weblogs. Sunday, February 13, 2005
Could Occam's Razor Explain Project Failures?
A heavy travel schedule this week provided the opportunity to catch up on loads of reading. Baseline Magazine is a monthly that focuses on IT projects and issues. Executive editor John McCormick wrote Projects Don't Fail, People Do. He says we only need to look to Occam's razor for the answer. Huh? That's what I said. McCormick explains it this way: "The rule known in scientific and philosophical circles as Occam's razor stipulates that when multiple theories are available to explain a problem, the simplest one is preferred." Projects don't fail; the people who manage project managers fail. He uses Occam's razor to answer the question, "Why do projects fail?" He refers to a series of government studies of project failures to conclude that everywhere there is a failure people are at the cause of the failure. He cites:
The general thinking is project management training and certification will go a long way to correcting this. Maybe. I fully agree that people fail not projects. I've stopped looking at the project manager. Why is it we put people in roles for which they are unqualified? Why are we not training our staff? And, what are we doing that we don't notice when project managers are not managing? The simple answer is those who manage and lead project managers are not doing their job. Visit the Archives for more postings |
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