After gantt charts, the next favourite topic of communicative techniques is the project 'stop light' chart. Three colours (red, amber, green) to give a 'high level' view of project performance. However, they are criticised.
On a real project (any decent sized construction project), I've never seen anything as puerile as a stop light pretend chart. I've seen detailed status reports.
There are only two main parameters for projects (once we've established the sought performance of the product): out-turn cost (EAC), and date of (defect free) completion. One could also report drift in the parameters, and if there are unmade decisions creating schedule or cost risk, the EAC and DFC date could have probability ranges attached. Not that a board will pay much attention to the implications of either: best convert them to a date range and a cost range.
On the other hand, some people seem to love RAG status reports. Maybe because they remind them of lollypops...I can't think of a grown-up's reason to like them.
Friday, August 26, 2016
Tuesday, August 23, 2016
Project Graphics
In a post some time ago on the Tufte forum, ET criticises the information sparseness of typical PM gantt charts, and their derivatives. I'd agree with him, but wonder what to do as an alternative. I've played with a few alternatives. I like the medical chart work; something like this could be effective; but I'm not sure how. Projects can be too complex. I think of a $200m retail complex with cinemas, parking, public facilities...let's say 1,500 high level tasks.
This topic has been explored by some others. One ending up with a vertical gantt chart. I don't see how this is an improvement, when people intuitively read a gantt chart left to right. A variation on this seeks to use the thickness of the gantt bars to carry information.
Based on this idea, I thought to add information numerically (thus, not quite a graphic development).
The baseline (or Original Target) is the line with diamond ends, the current forecast/actual (CF/A) is the hollow bar, and progress (PAD -- production at date) is indicated by the coloured solid bar. This is an earned value progress: the schedule performance index. If less than 1 (under-performing) the bar is amber, and lags the report date, representing as shown a SPI of 0.9: 90% of the distance between the start line and the report line.
If greater than 1, as on the lower bar (SPI of 1.2), and the activity is 'over' performing, the bar is green. The numbers surrounding are self evident on inspection.
A development of this is to strip the numbers off the bars, as below.
Here the activity name is above the 'action' bar. A blue solid bar indicates a completed task, and the black thick vertical end line represents the completion date. Early completion is shown in Activity name 3, and late completion in Activity name 4. As can be seen, Activity name 1 is substantially behind schedule, and Activity name 2 reasonably ahead of schedule.
Gauging progress is always problematic, unless the activity is easily measured: laying bricks or pouring concrete. Much harder for intangible activities, like design. Here I break the activity in easily assessed sub-activities, and measure those on a 0-100 basis. For design this might break into: requirements confirmed, preliminary options completed, preliminary options presented, preferred option identified (as a milestone) and so on. Easier to estimate this as well; and even easier if there is relevant 'reference class' historic data (and more at the Transportist).
The only drawback with my concept is that one must be using EVM to track production. But, that's a good thing.
This topic has been explored by some others. One ending up with a vertical gantt chart. I don't see how this is an improvement, when people intuitively read a gantt chart left to right. A variation on this seeks to use the thickness of the gantt bars to carry information.
Based on this idea, I thought to add information numerically (thus, not quite a graphic development).
The baseline (or Original Target) is the line with diamond ends, the current forecast/actual (CF/A) is the hollow bar, and progress (PAD -- production at date) is indicated by the coloured solid bar. This is an earned value progress: the schedule performance index. If less than 1 (under-performing) the bar is amber, and lags the report date, representing as shown a SPI of 0.9: 90% of the distance between the start line and the report line.
If greater than 1, as on the lower bar (SPI of 1.2), and the activity is 'over' performing, the bar is green. The numbers surrounding are self evident on inspection.
A development of this is to strip the numbers off the bars, as below.
Gauging progress is always problematic, unless the activity is easily measured: laying bricks or pouring concrete. Much harder for intangible activities, like design. Here I break the activity in easily assessed sub-activities, and measure those on a 0-100 basis. For design this might break into: requirements confirmed, preliminary options completed, preliminary options presented, preferred option identified (as a milestone) and so on. Easier to estimate this as well; and even easier if there is relevant 'reference class' historic data (and more at the Transportist).
The only drawback with my concept is that one must be using EVM to track production. But, that's a good thing.
Thursday, July 28, 2016
Leadership
Leadership is the practice of providing to people an environment where they can sustainably and beneficially explore capability, opportunity and enquiry in pursuit of mission.
Monday, July 25, 2016
10 factors 10: the team
10.
Your team. Be a great people manager. Show them the project vision and how they
can make it happen. Motivate them. Trust and believe in them. Make them feel valued. They will work wonders.
No manager 'motivates' people. People motivate themselves. Unfortunately if the manager is not careful he or she will end up DE-motivating people. Dangerous!Nor do you 'make' people feel valued. If you conceptualise the project team as a community of adults intent on a productive outcome, then you will inevitably value people's expertise and they in turn, being valued, will deliver commitment.
Monday, July 4, 2016
Doing it right
In Deming and disease, I wrote of an example of the typical management mish-mash often seen in business.
Demings recommendations may appear to be recondite to some, so examples?
One that that touches on the topic is: Seddon's "Systems thinking, lean production and action learning" in Action Learning Research and Practice 2007 v. 4 n. 1.
John Seddon practices systems work in organisations through Vanguard Consulting in the UK.
No commercial relation; I just think that his philosophy of the people doing the work are best placed to understand the system they work in is the right one.
Demings recommendations may appear to be recondite to some, so examples?
One that that touches on the topic is: Seddon's "Systems thinking, lean production and action learning" in Action Learning Research and Practice 2007 v. 4 n. 1.
John Seddon practices systems work in organisations through Vanguard Consulting in the UK.
No commercial relation; I just think that his philosophy of the people doing the work are best placed to understand the system they work in is the right one.
Sunday, July 3, 2016
Adding up for recruitment
I was recently involved in a recruitment where we scored the candidates against a number of criteria, then added the scores to determine the preferred candidate.
I wondered about this in terms of my post on scoring in procurement selections.
In the recruitment, did we rank candidates, in a Likert scale fashion, or did we give them a score in school quiz fashion.
If it was a quiz score, then adding might have been valid...if the scores were on the same base, but if Likert ranks, then we should have counted the number at each rank and compared them.
This would be closer to the approach I discussed, where a large number of criteria are established against which binary success-failure is determined. We then count the number of successes, and that person becomes the preferred one.
I wondered about this in terms of my post on scoring in procurement selections.
In the recruitment, did we rank candidates, in a Likert scale fashion, or did we give them a score in school quiz fashion.
If it was a quiz score, then adding might have been valid...if the scores were on the same base, but if Likert ranks, then we should have counted the number at each rank and compared them.
This would be closer to the approach I discussed, where a large number of criteria are established against which binary success-failure is determined. We then count the number of successes, and that person becomes the preferred one.
Deming and disease
I attended a talk recently where the speaker told us that she had just executed a very unpopular restructure in her firm, and that she was about to embark on an equally unpopular session of 'performance appraisals' that involved fitting people's performance to a bell curve.
Her c.v. in the conference papers mentioned that she had consulted using Deming's 'TQM'.
What a mish mash of conflicting and half-understood ideas.
TQM, at best, is an attempt to mechanise Deming, rather than to adopt his management philosophy.
His philosophy is encapsualted in his "System of Profound Knowledge"
Implementation is guided by his '14 points' to avoid or overcome the '7 diseases of management'.
The speaker did not appear to be familiar with any.
Summarising:
The 14 points
1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and to stay in business, and to provide jobs.
2. Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.
3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.
4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move toward a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
6. Institute training on the job.
7. Institute leadership (see Point 12 and Ch. 8). The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company (see Ch. 3).
9. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
12. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objective (see Ch. 3).
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody's job.
And, the 7 Deadly Diseases
1. Lack of constancy of purpose to plan product and service that will have a market and keep the company in business, and provide jobs.
2. Emphasis on short-term profits: short-term thinking (just the opposite from constancy of purpose to stay in business), fed by fear of unfriendly takeover, and by push from bankers and owners for dividends.
3. Evaluation of performance, merit rating, or annual review.
4. Mobility of management; job hopping.
5. Management by use only of visible figures, with little or no consideration of figures that are unknown or unknowable.
6. Excessive medical costs.
7. Excessive costs of liability, swelled by lawyers that work on contingency fees
The last two less of a problem in Australia, but the last is worth keeping an eye on.
Point 10 and Disease 3 appear to have been lost on the speaker.
Part of her problem was a mechanistic top-down and disempowering theory of leadership: the popular theory.
Opposed to this is the view that Mintzberg espouses and calls 'communityship'; this is more reflective of how adults work together to be productive, creative and committed to a mission. The manager's job in terms of 'leadership' is to create for people an environment where this is sustained, and ensure the flow of resources and information to enable it to happen.
In general management, and so in project management as well.
Her c.v. in the conference papers mentioned that she had consulted using Deming's 'TQM'.
What a mish mash of conflicting and half-understood ideas.
TQM, at best, is an attempt to mechanise Deming, rather than to adopt his management philosophy.
His philosophy is encapsualted in his "System of Profound Knowledge"
Implementation is guided by his '14 points' to avoid or overcome the '7 diseases of management'.
The speaker did not appear to be familiar with any.
Summarising:
The 14 points
1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and to stay in business, and to provide jobs.
2. Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.
3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.
4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move toward a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
6. Institute training on the job.
7. Institute leadership (see Point 12 and Ch. 8). The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company (see Ch. 3).
9. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
- Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
- Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
12. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objective (see Ch. 3).
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody's job.
And, the 7 Deadly Diseases
1. Lack of constancy of purpose to plan product and service that will have a market and keep the company in business, and provide jobs.
2. Emphasis on short-term profits: short-term thinking (just the opposite from constancy of purpose to stay in business), fed by fear of unfriendly takeover, and by push from bankers and owners for dividends.
3. Evaluation of performance, merit rating, or annual review.
4. Mobility of management; job hopping.
5. Management by use only of visible figures, with little or no consideration of figures that are unknown or unknowable.
6. Excessive medical costs.
7. Excessive costs of liability, swelled by lawyers that work on contingency fees
The last two less of a problem in Australia, but the last is worth keeping an eye on.
Point 10 and Disease 3 appear to have been lost on the speaker.
Part of her problem was a mechanistic top-down and disempowering theory of leadership: the popular theory.
Opposed to this is the view that Mintzberg espouses and calls 'communityship'; this is more reflective of how adults work together to be productive, creative and committed to a mission. The manager's job in terms of 'leadership' is to create for people an environment where this is sustained, and ensure the flow of resources and information to enable it to happen.
In general management, and so in project management as well.
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