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.

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.

The War Room, our major battleground.

This was written on Friday, December 5.

The last two days have been spent working on preparing schedules and data for the first population of the War Room boards. The War Room is a specific conference room where all schedules, upcoming tasks, accomplishments, milestones achieved, MSPs, and Risk Charts are hung in plastic holders. Team meetings are held here, and everybody is able to visually see, at a glance, how the project is progressing, and what is upcoming, or what is holding the project back. My primary tasks with Company X are to continually send out periodic e-mails requesting updates on task completions, risks, issues to progress, and schedules slides. This is where that vital communication comes in; I update phase reviews, master schedules, and other databases that are used when tracking and controlling the project and presenting progress to management. Rick printed all of the forms last night that I sent to him, and we will polish up the War Room today. It is important that we have this War Room up by Friday (our deadline) because the corporate office will be coming in to see Company X’s plans on Tuesday of this upcoming week.





Each function gets its own 6 holders with frequently updates schedules and data forms.



The Project Management function will have 18 holders.



The company Quality Manager did a stellar job of hanging all the holders on the wall. Since Company X is leaving the building to a demolition crew (condos will be built on this site), then the holders were drilled directly into the wall; in other companies, we have them hung on pieces of plywood.



Rick, my boss, surveys the work that is posted so far, while two men from the production management team review the diagrams for the new building (see below).



When a company is moving, it is important to use this transitional time to implement lean quality processes. The equipment must be carefully arranged for value creation and waste minimization.

Internal Communication

Communication is to Project Manager as water is to living organisms. Without it, the full potential is not realized and life fizzles out. Communication from the team members to the Project Manager and from the Project Manager to the team members is a lifeline for the project that must be established and maintained, with a strong beginning initiated by the Project Manager, that carries through to the very end.

With our current project, our team members have been (thus far) very good about communicating promptly and thoroughly, responding to my correspondence. A few members are a bit slower, but this is understandable as they work less at a desk and are more directly involved in the production floor. A few, however, are extremely slow at getting responses back to me; most exceptional is the Engineering manager. Throughout the entire move, I have yet to receive one response from him – well, I did receive one, in the very beginning, when I asked him for task begin/completion dates. He responded that he would have to get with production and quality and material – understandably – to get those correct dates. However, since then, I have not heard from him. It’s a little bit frustrating because I know that the way they begin the project is often the way they will finish the project (although this is not always completely true).

On the home front, between Rick and I, there was a recent major miscommunication resulting in a huge waste of time and resources. We had discussed printing out the MS Project schedules in order to lay them all out on a table and link dates. However, we couldn’t print them at Kinkos because they don’t have the MSP software in their system, and their only laptop station was full. I suggested that I could print them at home, and Rick agreed that that might be the best plan. Then we changed the subject and started talking about other things, and I never realized that Rick assumed I actually would print them. Oops! Next week, Rick asked if we could meet on Monday, and I showed up after my morning class at the college. “Do you have the schedules?” Rick asked. Uhh ... no … was I supposed to bring them? Major error on my part. I drove back to Mom’s house to print them, but the laptop I was using was unable to connect to the printer – after an hour of technology struggles, I gave up and packed everything back into my car and drove to Gary’s (my fiancé’s) house to print on his excellent printer. This took an excessively long time. By the time I returned to Tully’s with the schedules, it was 2:00 in the afternoon. Rick was tired and annoyed, so after we briefly went over the tasks for the next few days, he took the schedules and headed home to work on them himself. I stayed at Tully’s until 6:00, working on the forms and schedules for the War Room at Company X, and sending out e-mails regarding task schedules.

Lessons learned -- communicate, communicate, communicate. Never assume. Call ahead. E-mail more than necessary. Ask questions!

Those hidden agendas ...

Everyone always has a hidden agenda, even if it's subconscious, or if they aren't intentionally trying to hide it. In thise case, Human Resources has a hidden agenda for reception. Currently, this company has no dedicated full-time reception; the phone coverage is just parceled out amongst the employees.
The HR manager confided to me their problem; she said that only the women managers are picked on to cover phones, and that the men - the primary decision makers in the instance of hiring full-time reception - never cover the phones. She said, "At the new plant, they can either hire a full-time receptionist, or they can start taking their turn covering the phones."
Since a full-scale move like this is the appropriate time to implement changes, every time the issue of reception comes up in discussion, she says something to try to guide the team towards her hidden agenda. When the office move is discussed, she says, "We don't have a full time receptionist, and we will need that in order to staff to reception areas at both plants for a while ... we don't have a receptionist ... we need a receptionist ..."
From an employee standpoint, I fully understand her. The company I worked at previously did a poor job of assigning phone coverage duties to the admin department, and the phone backup duties most often fell on me and my sister; we both worked in marketing. It takes time away from an employee's regular job, cuts into another departmental budget, and fosters ill-will and grudges and bad attitudes.
It is worthwhile, I believe, for this company to consider hiring a receptionist - and if they do not, a comprehensive assessment of current policy needs to be performed, and an open table discussion opened up for affected employees to voice their feelings. Hopefully, by utilizing a quality team process, and including all the participants, management can at least get the attitudes to change, even if no further budgeting is allotted for a new receptionist.
Oftentimes, the employees just want to know that their voice is heard, and their opinion is not valued. If they do not perceive this equity, then they feel misused and misunderstood by those that they see as the pencil-pushers in the back office.

E-mail issues

Today we are having a full-team meeting regarding the dates and durations that everyone inputted into their MS Project schedules. Oddly enough, two people said they did not receive the schedules I sent to them – one was the Quality director, so I resent it to him, and the other was the Facilities manager. I double-checked in my sent items, and those schedules had in fact been sent to them; so I am not sure what happened between my computer and theirs.

To prevent this problem in the future, I think I am going to see if, Network Solutions, the host that we use for our company e-mail, has a “read receipt” for e-mails, because that would mitigate the risk of problems occurring from team members not receiving their information.

Sending schedules out ASAP.

I sent out the schedules that we typed into MS Project to all of the team members. Unfortunately, this happened a few days later than it should have (or could have) happened, giving them only two days to put together durations and due dates for their activities, before a full-team meeting to review schedules was to take place. In the future, I would stay up all night if necessary to get the schedules out IMMEDIATELY after they were typed into MS Project, so that team members would have as much time as possible, to as soon as possible, input durations and dates.
The team members were very accommodating, however, working on their schedules as soon as they could. The HR manager, with the most activities (approximately 400), definitely had her work cut out! When she saw the schedule, she wrote back to me, "Did I really say all that?!"

Company Newsletter

The Human Resources manager sent me a copy of the company newsletter, with an article about my boss and I coming in to facilitate the move. Here is a copy of that article, along with the photos they included.

Project Repositioning Planning Training



Our staff, with the help of Baker and Associates, spent two days immersed in project
planning. The overall objective was to brainstorm and identify all the activities, tasks,and milestones needed to build a successful Project Repositioning Plan for moving out of the Seattle Plant and into the Puyallup Plant. We focused on the following:
∗ All inputs and outputs
∗ Interdependencies
∗ Timeframes
∗ Resource Responsibilities
∗ Time Constraints
∗ Critical Path



Breaking down activities, tasks and setting milestones was not an easy task. Each department mapped out its activities which were then reviewed by the rest of the staff for additional activities, tasks and milestone timeframes

The team was focused on a myriad of issues. Examples of some of them: Facility planning, to include utilities, permits, equipment, contractor safety and tracking, security badges and building access. Inventory levels, scheduling and build ahead requirements. Drawings, procedures, product planning, EHS requirements, files, archives, telephone, fax and computer capabilities. Equipment and manpower movement. Quality requirements and customer process approvals. Customer and supplier notification. Carpool and vanpools, flex passes. Plant layout, lunch room, training rooms, meeting rooms, office layout.



The Mezzanine Training Room is being designated as our “War Room”. It will be soon filled with project planning boards and plant layout maps. The project planning boards are detailed activity work plans which will be reviewed and updated on a
routine basis until the move (repositioning) is complete. In addition to work plans and status reports, we will be using a database to help us manage our progress. The information recorded will be used throughout the course of the repositioning to ensure a smooth transition to our new facility.



Our goal is to set up the Puyallup plant to enable us to produce our products in the most efficient manner and to provide a comfortable workplace for our employees.

Type like a madman!

On the 14th, Rick and I came in and spent all of Friday typing the project schedules into MS Project. This took hours, hours, hours ... It was somewhat relaxing, though. I turned on my Christmas music, nice and low, and just started typing. The HR lady brought in carafes of coffee and I had a little bag of Quakers rice puffs to snack on, so I was happy.

Function Activities

Terminology - Function: a certain general function of the overall firm, such as Finance, Production, or Tooling.
Function Owner: the department head in charge of overseeing and directing that function, such as the Finance Manager, Production Manager, or Facility Director.
Activity: activity, task, etc.



When we sit down to put together a WBS for a company that is repositioning, a function owner inevitably always announces, after 3 to 5 minutes of brainstorming activities, "Well, it looks like my department won't have very much to do." This is a red flag to me - nay, this is a storm of Communists charging down the street waving their banners. This usually means one, or all, of several things.
a) They underestimate the scope.
b) They do not want to commit themselves to too much, in case they cannot perform. These are usually the cocky types who dislike supervision or authority. They are often the older employees who have been in the industry for a long time.
c) They do not understand the activity.
d) They just didn't think long enough.
e) In underestimating the scope and not understanding the activity, and not thinking long enough, they summarily under-assume the amount of work it will actually involve for their department to successfully reposition.

One of the first things I would ask this function owner is, "If the rest of the departments were moved to the new location today, could you just hop in your car and drive down there and start working?"

Chances are, the answer is NO. On the first level, we have just pure logistics to consider. How will your office furniture or personal belongings get to the new location? Do you even know where your office will be located? Who will set up your items? Will you have the data lines you need - does IT even know what systems you will need? Or is there going to be a new arrangement for your machines? Will you know where to go? Will there be any new machines implemented, will you need any training? The list goes on!

A second area of consideration is other functions. After putting together an initial Tier II schedule, a function owner should also consider the other departments' schedules; these will invariably affect them. Do not finish your own, personal brainstorming session and feel that the schedule is closed!
For instance, Purchasing may put together a short list of activities and then declare that they have nothing to do. But then Production will come to them and tell them that, since Facilities has an extended down time projected for the equipment in transit, they need to order a substantial amount of parts for the Materials build-ahead strategy. Suddenly Purchasing needs to get together with vendors to input massive purchase orders with sufficient lead time - but this involves going to the Finance team and investigating the budget and cashflow available for these POs. Thus, we can see that, based on a Facilities projection, a number of other functions are substantially impacted.

A third facet of the brainstorming process is involving frontline managers and lower-level individuals, from the bottom of the hierarchy on up, in the activities generation. This not only provides ownership and buy-in from the employees that will be essentially doing the groundwork for the project, but it also enables the function owners to get firsthand information on what needs to be done. Many new aspects of the project will come up when a whole-team approach is taken; new eyes, new perspectives, and new information. All of this is pertinent to a thorough project Work Breakdown Structure.

Facilitating a meeting - looking for cooperation!

We are back in the conference room at Company XYZ with the whole project team for the day, again working on the WBS process. Unfortunately, a few hidden agendas are already rising to the surface.

A facility manager seems to be far too optimistic, assuming he can take on the role of GC (General Contractor) and wear a number of other hats without any problem. I am not sure why he is assuming he can take on all this work and not drop the ball anywhere, as past Lessons Learned have proven often happens when such an attempt is made. I've learned from another manager here he can be a real "stick in the mud", sometimes far too cocky about his knowledge and abilities. In a recent project where some team members tried to reorganize floor layout, the facility manager got so belligerent about it that he refused to help at all; machines that were marked for move had to be physically moved by the production manager, since help from facilities was not made available. He is unwilling to implement changes and prefers to stay in the past mode of work; he seems to think that he "knows everything", and we all know how impossible it is to work with team members who know everything and listen to no one.

The production manager who attempted to implement the changes in the past is a forward thinking man with an agenda of lean, modern processes, and smooth flow. He is working hard for the betterment of the company, and hopefully, in the end, he will take the hill and win the battle.

Work Breakdown Structure

Left this morning to head up to Company XYZ in South Seattle with Rick at about 6:30AM. We arrived at the plant we will be repositioning and set up in the conference room.

Rick led the first several hours with a presentation and some training materials, preparing the team for the process ahead with techniques, verbiage, and risks. We have a team of approximately 11, so it is on the large size of average. We broke for lunch at about 11:40; it was boxed lunches from www.gretchensshoebox.com, they were absolutely delicious. I kept the minutes during the training and idea generation period of the meeting; during the second half, we had a little bit more training, prepping for the actual WBS process.

I had printed large sheets of butcher paper, one for each facility function, and each function divided into areas such as "Prep for Occupancy", and other different stages of the individual function's move. We hung these on the wall, and function owners wrote their activities onto sticky notes and stuck them to the butcher paper in approximate chronological order.

We ended the meeting at 3:00 PM, and will resume tomorrow morning at 8:00AM. I will send the minutes to the team members once I obtain their e-mail addresses.

Still preparing materials

I spent about 7 hours today running to Staples, Kinkos, a local printer, and meeting with Rick in Redmond. We worked on the presentation, I worked on assembling the training books, and so far, things are almost wrapped up.
Now I just need to go to Kinkos tonight to pick up some business cards for Hammons, who is going to come in and supervise the facilitation for a few days, while Rick is otherwise booked up.
Tracey and I had to fake up the business card for Hammons today because the native file is in an old version of Corel, and she does not have the hi-res logo, or the fonts. She opened my PDF business card through Illustrator and worked her magic, finding a similar font and overlaying it on my business card. The final version looks so similar to the original cards that you can't even tell at first glance that there is any difference at all!

Physical materials

I'm up late working on some training, or guidance, materials for our brainstorming event next week; basically, just printing and assembling the files Rick e-mailed to me.
With the last company we repositioned, I became proficient and confident in designing formats for schedules and other forms. This is a skill I hope to develop as time goes on; I think I will do quite well at it, especially with more technical training.
Since I have minimal experience with Microsoft Project, and the college course is not offered until Spring 09, I spoke with the teacher at the college. She advised me to purchase the book now and do all of the exercises. She is going to let me into her online class and send me the syllabus so that I can learn as much as possible (and do all the work ahead of time) as soon as I can.

Repositioning Project With Company XYZ

Today my boss and I drove down to the south Seattle area for a set-up meeting and a tour of XYZ's facilities. We will begin facilitating their repositioning project in the middle of next week; a three-day brainstorming process with sticky notes and flip charts, it is an exciting stage and can take hours. Hopefully, we will have it wrapped up by the middle of the third day.
XYZ has to be completely moved by July 31, 2009, because developers want their lot to build condos. This will be a quick move; some processes may need to be expedited. And since they are moving to Puyallup, I wonder what their employee retention rate will be?

Life and Times: What Is Project Management?

Project Management is the unique and finite business process of developing an organized effort to accomplish a specific effort that is usually a one-time event, often bringing together individuals from various areas of expertise. A project can range in complexity and detail and length of time, from making dinner one evening to building an interstate highway infrastructure over the course of many years. Project management is the physical task of developing the project plan, often facilitating experts to define goals and objective, specifying activities and processes by which goals will be achieved, determining what resources will be necessary, and impementing budgets and timelines into the overal plan for completion. The Project Manager facilitates the successful implementation of the project plan, maintaining specific controls to ensure that the plan is managed according to plan.

The standard Project Management major phases are: Feasibility Study, Project Planning, Implementation, Evaluation and Support/Maintenance.

In this blog, I will document my Project Management certificate program, and the projects that I participate in along the way.