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.