Friday, May 29, 2009

Teaching Teams About WBS

A simple and effective WBS instruction session before every project is, I believe, crucial.

When team members do not know what a task is or should look like, the project manager gets to spend hours sifting through Gantt charts and a) giving their best guess at what a vague task description means, b) calling team members to define a task and wasting precious company and personal time, or c) incorrectly understanding the task description and thus perhaps incorrectly assigning time and resource allotments. You can easily see how this could become a problem, and a huge time-consuming waste of effort.

I spent a lot of time on the last project determining what "Permits" was to mean (Business permit? Fire permit? HazMat permit? Wastewater permit? Building permit?) , "Business cards" (Price out? Create? Purchase? Print? Distribute?), and of course multiple tasks with the exact same description (Three different "Obtain Boeing approval for process" tasks in various settings - at one point the function owner - and author of the tasks - said to delete them, seeing them as duplicates, until I realized they were intended to b associated with different processes).

In order to avoid this issue, I would like to spend a half hour in our orientation session with the team members to train them simply on how to construct a WBS - or more to the point, how to create tasks. (A WBS is a more complicated procedure and the Project Manager can consolidate tasks into that, if necessary.)

Hands-on experience is always the best teacher, so we would bring props and require interaction.

Props: Coffee pot, filter, beans, grinder, cup, milk & sugar.

1. Determine the scope of the project: Are we going to (a) Make a pot of coffee, or (b) Serve a cup of coffee? (Latter)

2. Brainstorm necessary steps (i.e. purchase coffee beans, grind beans, plug in coffee pot, turn on coffee pot, fill with water, fill with beans, turn on, let percolate, pour cup, add milk, add sugar). Depending on the size of team, you could use any number of different brainstorming steps. For a large team, I would suggest going around the circle one at a time throwing out ideas, and writing these on a board, until all ideas are exhausted.
For a small team, you could have them fill out blank index cards in a given time limit of, say, three minutes, and then collate and through the authors' participation and consent, remove duplicates. You may find that, right off the bat with this method, people will realize how vague some of their descriptions are.

3. Now, have entire team look at the steps on the board, and one at a time have them interactively convert them into deliverables. i.e. for "Coffee Beans", you can ask them, what does this mean? No doubt the author will say, "Buy coffee, of course!" while another person will say, "Probably means add coffee to the pot." Use this time to help them understand what a deliverable is: Something you can actively do, phrased in verbs. The task would now read "Purchase coffee beans".

Tip: Do not make the tasks too short - such as Get up from chair, Open door, Go to Car, Go in store, Choose beans, Pay for beans ... etc.... A rule of thumb is, no less than a day, on average. On the flip side, do not make them too long - for instance, "Grow coffee beans". A task this large may entail several months to several years! It might even be its own project! The length of a task varies from project to project, but most PMs feel that anywhere from more than a week to more than a month is too lengthy for one task. You may need to play your tasks by ear.

4. Once the tasks are all on the board in terms of deliverables, you can either (a) put them onto index cards and re-arrange them until they are in approximate chronological sequence, or (b) if it is a small group, put them into MSProject immediately and allow them to re-arrange them into order.

Learning by doing is always the best method ... And expand on #3 to whatever length you deem necessary, to make sure your team members walk away from this exercise knowing a few important things:

1. Frame EACH task as a deliverable (using verbs).
2. Do not make them too small, or too large (you will need to define the time range for your project tasks) .
3. Do not allow any two tasks to be phrased exactly the same way - separate from the schedule, they should all be recognizable and understandable.
4. Make the wording clear enough that somebody outside the project (although perhaps not outside the industry!) could understand what it meant.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

The Triple-Header

Rule of thumb that every Project Manager lives by (or should live by): Never triple-constrain a project!

How do you communicate that to the project sponsor?

Still working on that one ...

In our project at Company X, I would say the project is pretty close to being triple constrained.

1. Cost: The company outlet is severely restricted in how much corporate will allow them to spend. However, this is the constraint that I see giving the most.

2. Quality: They manufacture airplane parts and as such, certifications, quality standards, FAA approval, Boeing/Goodrich approvals, and so on and so forth down the line, are not optional. However, this constraint does give in aspects such as repainting, purchasing new equipment, etc, due to time and cost respectively.

3. Time: When the lease for the old place is up, it's up. The building will be reclaimed by the landlord and Company X must be gone.

Working on a project with so many high-risk constraints brings some greater measure of stress, but also an opportunity for the Project Manager to shine.

Thus, my work partner and I have been using the juggle-swap-cut-insert method to keep priority tasks in the forefront, to keep team members focused and motivated, and to convince function managers to stop sliding tasks out (they used up all the available slack in the first three months of the move, much to our chagrin, and contrary to our advice and urging).

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Up to speed

To the Dear and Gentle Reader,

I haven't blogged in a while - things have been busy on the job as well as in personal life, with planning a wedding, lots of schooling, and the usual eight hours of sleep.

I've been keeping blog notes in a lessons learned Excel spreadsheet, though. So, I'll have plenty to share with you!

For now, I must prepare for a Project Status Update meeting in the morning.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Brevity is the soul of ...

...well, it is the best way to get people to read, at any rate. Keeping things brief, that is .

Here is how my weekly task-update e-mail reads:

Morning Function Owner Name Here,

These are the tasks that are due for completion or scheduled during the upcoming week. Please review and update.

Function Name Here Schedule: December 15 – December 19:
Items highlighted in RED appear to be overdue.

Task Task Task Task EBD ECD

Thanks,

Andrea Jordan

A sidenote

On the 15th of December, I did in fact go in to Company X and post the first full refresh of the War Room contents. I was going to send out an e-mail to the team members but somehow I FORGOT after I got home, so I will send it out on the 1st (or 2nd, whenever they are open) of January when I go up there for my second full refresh. Here is how it reads:

Team:

I have just finished the mid-month update of the War Room. The task issues and schedule progress reports in the War Room reflect the data you have sent to me in response to the weekly schedules sent to you by e-mail. If, while in the War Room, you notice anything on your schedule in error, please let me know as soon as possible.

You can use the War Room to track your own progress (percent complete is posted for each separate function), to view the progress and accomplishments of your teammates, and to make schedule changes.

Please feel free to write all over the documents posted in the War Room! They will be updated continuously to serve you and your customers.


-Andrea Jordan

Updates on updates

Right now we have passed the painful setting up and War-Room assembly stage, and we are in the more relatively peaceful (for the PMs) "maintenance" stage of the project. My job is, essentially, data collection and crunching. I communicate with the team members to find out what is done, and go back to the forms and schedules to input my new information, and then publish it to the War Room or in phase reviews/status reports. Here is a model of how my communication plan with the team members works:

Every Monday - I e-mail the team members their tasks in the upcoming week (these may be tasks that begin during the next 5 days, are to be worked on during the next 5 days, or must be completed within the next 5 days).
Then I respond to their responses, with any of my further inquiries, and subsequentl use what they send to me to update the schedules and forms in my computer.

On the 1st and 15th of every month: I go to Company X's headquarters and print out the schedules and forms (see my previous post), and put these up on the walls.

More or less, that is basically it; everything else is maintenance, constant refresh of the dates on the forms, collecting and responding to e-mails, getting information out to the team, taking info back to Rick, designing and editing and creating phase reviews and reports.

I like it!
Right now I am seated by the fire, the Christmas tree glowing beside me, and sending out e-mails and updating forms. Quite the life.

Monday, December 8, 2008

The plastic holders

These are the holders that we use for the forms; they are sturdy and reliable. They are also somewhat flexible and can hold quite a lot of paper!

Wall Sign Holders
Office Max
$6.95/ea
Manufacturer # 9638010M
V1577
SKU/Item # 20334746
11x8 1/2"

Finishing the War Room


The Quality Manager ran out of plastic holders on Friday (this was in part anticipated), so Rick and I picked some up after work that day. I brought them in this morning, and the QM is drilling them into the wall while I finish some new edits and print the forms that will go in them. I think four of the functions were not up by Friday; however, they will all be completed by this afternoon.
This is a key deadline, because the corporate office will be visiting the site on Wednesday to review their project plans; having the War Room will make Company X, and Baker & Associates, look really good.

E-mail Template

When I sent my initial e-mail out to the team members requesting schedule updates, this is what I wrote; the portion that I will continue to send to them every Monday morning is after the first paragraph.

I always begin the move communication plan with a CC to the location manager on every e-mail, until he asks me to quit. This gives visibility to what we are doing.

Afternoon Mr. Green,

This is the periodic task-update e-mail I will be sending to you throughout the move. These e-mails help everyone to stay on the same page, and keep the entire project moving safely and regularly forward. The replies I will receive from you in response to this e-mail enable us to keep project reports fresh and current for management review and customer satisfaction – and customer satisfaction is key to this project’s success!

These are the tasks that are due for completion or scheduled to begin in the upcoming week on your schedule, as determined by you in November. Please review and update the following items. (I have also attached your schedule for items over the next 15 days; feel free to make any changes to that schedule and forward it back to me.)

Schedule: Tasks due this week, December 1 – December 5:
(These are taken from the "Key Tasks" chart, which is developed from the MSProject schedule that each person filled out, per their WBS.)
These items appear to be past due – let me know if they have been completed, or if their dates need to change.
(Usually overdue tasks are highlighted to draw attention to them. On the Key Tasks chart, they are in Bold Red.)
Task Task Task EBD ECD

Task task task task EBD (estimated begin date) ECD (estimated complete date)

Please provide updates by replying to this e-mail by end of Thursday, December 4th to support the next schedule revision. With updates in hand, I will come onsite to post them in the War Room for review. If a due-date needs to slide, please send me a note, and also let me know why. In addition, include any current or upcoming issue or concerns you may have with these tasks or associated risks.

Thanks so much for your valuable input,

Andrea Jordan

Forms for the War Room

Forms that go up on the walls in the War Room: these forms are updated continually as information comes to me through whatever route (usually e-mail), and in response to the requests that I send out to team members or updates provided in the War Room or in meetings. These are refreshed and posted in the War Room on approximately the 1st (or 31st) and 15th of each month. Yes, this entails a lot of work and effort, but it is well worth it when the project can be effectively tracked.

Key Tasks

These are the Key Tasks (listed for each function and owner) that need to be either begun or accomplished within a given period (usually 15 days). I e-mail these schedules out to each owner in the beginning of every week, and they respond with updates, changes, etc. This keeps our master schedule on-task and current!

If there are no key tasks for a certain department, we label the schedule as such so that when the schedules are reviewed, it doesn't look as it we just never got around to filling it out, or forgot about it.

Accomplishments

When a department completes a task, it is listed here for two cycles (one month). This gives some measure of recognition, while also allowing other team members to briefly see what has been done in other areas of the company.

Similar to when there are no Key Tasks, we write N/A on the form when it is blank.

Milestones and Task Completions

This is a tracking device for each function's overall completion. This is the most confusing document of all, as each company has a different way of categorizing their tasks and phases; so this document changes with every company.

Risk Assessment

Each function thinks of risks related to their departmental move and then fills out a risk information chart, and a risk matrix.

The risks for that department are then input onto this comprehensive matrix, so that, at a glance, we can tell which departments need the most mitigation/have the highest risk factors involved.

Top 10 Issues to Progress

This is a spotlight on problems. We want attention to be driven towards risks, possible failures, or issues that will hold the project up or delay task completion. Sometimes, it is difficult to get function owners to cough up these issues; you have to be constantly on the alert, listening even in casual conversation, for possible issues to bring attention to.