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!