project_management_made_easy

Keeping Everything on Track

would get our location, plot it on a map, and then call in the crew to decide how to change course. The same is true in a status meeting—we get the information before the meeting, figure out what the issues are, and then call the meeting to decide what to do next.

When we receive status information, the news may be good or bad. It doesn’t matter. The first thing we should do is say, “Thank you for letting me know.” Then stop, breathe, and make sure that the team member really heard you. Only after that do you say something between “Great! I’m glad you got all that done” and “Oh, my! We’ll have to figure out how to fix that.”

Figure 13-1 shows how work done, time, cost, and risk relate to a sailing trip.

The location of our sailboat is status information. On a project, the equivalent is the answers to these questions:

What work have we got done?

How many hours of effort and days of duration have we used?

How much money have we spent?

There is only one right way

to receive a status report—by saying, “Thank you!”

F eedback backfires when

blame and personality get in the way.

Project Management for Small Business Made Easy

When we plot the answers to those questions against our plan, we’re comparing our actual work results, effort, and expenses against our plan. That’s like putting the location of the sailboat on the chart that shows our planned route, as in Figure 13-1. The distance from the starting point to where we are now—the work we’ve done—is our progress. The long diagonal line is a forecast of where we will end up if we don’t correct our course. Instead, we plan to correct our course (curved arrow) to reach our destination. By including wind (constraints) and storm (risk), our status meeting can include project risk management as well as scope, time, and cost. We can also ask our team members how they feel about the quality of the work being done and about hassles in the process, so that we check the status of quality. We can check in about communications, teamwork, and purchasing, as well. It is good to touch base on all nine areas of project management each week.

In planning how to correct our course, we integrate all this information and find the best way to get the project done right, focusing most on new things we need to do to prevent or fix project problems and on the work of the upcoming week. We’ll look at that in detail at the end of the chapter, after we discuss feedback and control.

The Feedback-and-Control Concept

Feedback is possibly the most misunderstood management concept. Let’s begin by clarifying three key points about the relationship between feedback and criticism.

Feedback has nothing to do with criticism. In fact, any kind of criticism, blame, or personality interferes with the good relationships and clear communication essential to effective feedback.

Negative feedback is course correction. Negative feedback is not bad. If I tell you, “You’re doing a great job. In fact, this is far better than we need. You could ease up on quality and work a little faster, and that would be great for the customer and the project,” then that’s negative feedback, because it is information that corrects your course.

Positive feedback is not vague rah-rah. Positive feedback in business is a very specific message, saying, “Good job! Do it again.”

Keeping Everything on Track

When someone is on course, say, “Good job! Do it again.” When someone needs to change direction, appreciate his or her work and give a bit of negative feedback, course correction. If we do this each week, the team does the right work until the project is done.

Feedback and Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA)

Although the idea of feedback and the Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) method were developed separately, they are very similar. Both involve getting information about where we are, deciding what to do, and then taking corrective action. PDCA was developed by Walter A. Shewhart, a physicist at Bell Labs who developed tools for engineering and business based on scientific principles. (We’ll discuss PDCA in Chapter 16, Quality: Eliminate Error.) Feedback was defined by Gregory Bateson, a philosopher and scientist who made important contributions to many fields, including psychology, sociology, the invention of the computer, radar-controlled gunnery, and business management.

The Lesson: Whatever we call it, checking in with reality and correcting our course make good business sense.

Practical Course Correction

In this section, we look at two issues: effective management of the project in the doing stage and the eight levels of course correction and change control.

Effective Management of the Doing Stage

To implement the status-reporting and course-correction techniques in this chapter effectively, remember these key points:

Maintain an effective, goal-oriented team environment with lots of communication and lots of appreciation for good work. This is an effective context for course correction.

Track reality. Gather information about work done (scope), time and money spent, risk, quality, and other issues every week, before the status meeting.

Prepare by plotting your course. Compare the information with your project plan, action plan, and risk plan before the status meeting. Know whether you are getting enough done. Know what the current risks are. Know what’s up on any other issues. Get a sense of your new direction.

Negative feedback is

course correction. Positive feedback says, “Good job, do it again.”

Catch small, repeating

problems before they sink your project.

Project Management for Small Business Made Easy

Done Is Done

In Chapter 6, What Are We Making? we discussed the importance of clear, precise scope definition, all the way down to the details of work packages and items on our action plan. This pays off now, as we are managing work progress. With small, clear action items, there is no ambiguity. Work is either done or not. No one can say, “It’s a big job and I’m partway through.”

Let team members know that work counts as done only when it is done, tested, and fixed. We mark a task as done only when the person who is going to use the output as an input for the next task says, “It’s good; I can use it.” Otherwise, the project will run into trouble. Many projects falter because sloppy definition of work packages lets people say, “I’m working on it; it will be all right.” We can’t know if that’s true, so their work is no longer under management. Then they run late or the work isn’t good and it’s too late to correct course. This is a major source of project delays.

The Lesson: Define work packages clearly and declare something done only if it’s done and it works.

Plan course correction with your team in the status meeting.

Be clear and specific. Point by point, say either, “Good work! Do it again,” or “You’re doing well, but I need you to make this change.” Be clear. For example, there is a difference between saying, “I need you to get more done by staying focused. Keep the quality right where it is and work faster with more attention,” and saying, “I need you to get done. You’re paying too much attention to quality beyond what the customer needs. Focus a little less on perfecting the details

and more on delivering the work.”

The Eight Levels of Course Correction and Change

Management

There are four levels of course correction that apply to a project in a routine way, when we are still getting work done according to the original plan:

Making single small adjustments. If someone who usually does good work makes a mistake or is running behind, just let him or her know.

Correcting small repeating problems. This is probably the biggest risk to a small business project. If things are late or of low quality over and over, there is some underlying cause. Perhaps the person responsible for

Keeping Everything on Track

the task is always being interrupted or doesn’t understand the work or have the right skill. Get to the bottom of this and correct it early or the repeated small delays and problems will add up to a very big mess.

Fixing a major problem. If one big mistake is made, we need to fix it while keeping the rest of the project moving. Or, on a one-person project, stop, fix the problem, and get back on track. If we’ve done our risk planning well, we’ve left leeway in our schedule and budget for one or two problems on a small project and a few on a big one. If not, we’ll have to consider project change management (below).

Dealing with a risk event. If a risk event happens, we need to both take care of it and also keep the project going. Our advance risk planning will help, but now we need to move into action. On a team project, consider whether you should run the project and let someone else take care of the risk event, or whether you should let someone else guide the project while you take care of the risk event.

Sometimes, we can’t follow the original plan, because of an error in the plan or a big change or several risk events. When we change the plan, it is called rebaselining. This means that we are working to a new plan, with a new schedule, a new budget, and some new risks as well. Here are the four levels of change management and risk management to deal with these situations:

Add to the scope. If, when we evaluate a change request, we decide to add to project scope, we’re adding time, cost, and risk. If it is essential so that project results actually add value, then we do it. If it is very beneficial and early enough in the project to make the change, then we might do it. But, in either case, it is equivalent to changing the destination on our sailing trip. We’re going to need more time and more food and water (money). Worse, we’re going to be sailing into uncharted waters, going to places where we didn’t plan to go with unexpected risks.

Drop something from the scope. Sometimes we run into trouble— either a big risk event or just a discovery that work can’t go as fast as we’d hoped. Then we can’t deliver everything on time and within the budget. If we cannot delay delivery and get more money, then we should intentionally drop some part of our scope. This is equivalent to sailing to a closer island, but still making a safe journey. If we

When project success

requires a change to the plan, be clear and decisive.

Keeping Everything on Track

Conclusion: Steady as She Goes!

In this chapter, you’ve learned all you need to know to get status information, evaluate status, plan effective corrective action, and put that action into place. Your project should be humming along. In the next five chapters, you’ll learn more techniques for managing the project during the doing stage:

In Chapter 14, you’ll learn to prevent that deadly disease, scope creep.

In Chapter 15, you’ll learn about how to manage time, money, and purchasing.

In Chapter 16, you’ll learn lots of good quality management techniques to eliminate errors and ensure that your project results are valuable for—and valued by—both your company and your customers.

In Chapter 17, you’ll learn about how to keep risk under control throughout the project.

In Chapter 18, you’ll learn the fine art of managing expectations.

Course correction can be

applied to each area of project management.

Prevent Scope Creep

Let’s look specifically at why people ask for more and who is most likely to do it.

Why People Ask for More

Good news! Most of the reasons people ask for more are a result of our own poor planning and communications. Why is that news good? Because it means that, if we plan and communicate well, we can prevent most scope creep. Here are common reasons people ask for more and how we can prevent them.

People weren’t included in the original planning. Find everyone affected by your project and talk with each of them all early.

People don’t understand that requests have to come early. Educate everyone about the 1:10:100 rule and let everyone know when the gate at the end of planning and preparation is scheduled. Let them know that they have a deadline.

We don’t look closely enough at the initial situation of the project.

This is the “alligators in the swamp” problem we talked about in Chapter 12, Pulling the Plan Together. It happens mostly on projects that are fixing or repairing things. Investigate the current condition of what you are going to fix before you fix it. You might even consider doing two projects. The first would just evaluate the condition of the item or system and then, after the evaluation project is complete, the second would be to make the necessary repairs.

People don’t speak up. People want something related to the project, but they just keep mum. The best we can do is to encourage people to dream, to define opportunities, and to name problems they want solved and hassles they want to go away. If we encourage regular, truthful, and positive communication about our business, then we can prioritize our projects and include all important work during project planning.

People get bright ideas. Here, we encourage brainstorming during planning, so that bright ideas are found early.

We discover a misunderstanding. Sometimes, in spite of our best efforts, we don’t understand what the customers want during planning. When they see the product, during the doing stage or, unfortunately, sometimes at the end of the project, they say, “This isn’t what

Do what you plan to do

and don’t do more.