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

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.