Biotexing and Decision Making

Biotex is a well known Dutch soaking agent. Difficult stains require soaking. In parallel, stringent decisions, require Biotexing. The more stringent, the more Biotexing is required.

Project Portfolio Management

A lot has been written on Project Portfolio Management (PPM). However, I needed to piece things together to get a picture of why it is good to have PPM in place. This blog is sharing this picture.

MIN = MAX-rule

MIN = MAX-rule

The MINimum that is required is the MAXimum that we'll do                         (Stefan van Aalst)

In the top 3 of reasons why projects fail or are less successful than they could have been, is scope creep / changes. The min=max-rule significantly reduces this cause for failure.

Team Forming

In forming the team three things are important:

having the right styles in the team creating shared values creating a shared vision

Style

In any change that has some impact, it is important to have a quick start. Momentum must be created and all the basic processes, procedures, tooling, etc must be in place as soon as possible. The style, start-up'ers, that is required is quite different from the next phase. Usually this phase takes between 3 to 6 months. To make the change lasting, slowly but with persistance, people have to be guided in the new way of working. The time frame associated with this is in the order of 18 to 24 months. The style, implementors, is very different from the style needed in the previos phase. One of the biggest pitfalls we experienced in many organizations in every type of industry, is that good people are in charge with the inappropriate style given the phase. The most success has been achieved by having a person with start-up style in place in the beginning and that the implementor is already present in the team. When the start-up nears completion, the implementor becomes more and more dominant and will take full charge at a given moment. The start-up'er will stay available and will emerge when a crisis might take place.

Shared values

Too often people want to start working too soon on the change. A change is never a one man show. People have to work closely together and sooner or later differences will pop-up. Having strong binding shared values ensure speedy and proper solutions whilst ensuring the relationship; making it usually even stronger. Shared values come into existance via the well known steps Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing-Adjourning. However, each of these steps must be carefully prepared and managed. People with natural leadership skills can do this on the fly, however, to ensure the right outcomes they do well by doing what others for sure must do: following Plan-Do-Study-Act for each stage. A start-up'er must embrace and breath-and-live the shared values that are created together very quickly. Implementors usually require more time and tend to focus on those shared values that in the implementing stage are so important.

Shared vision

Very quickly the team must embrace a strong, compelling and above all shared vision. It must be felt in the gutt. Frequently the initial vision changes during the process. If people only agreed, or can only agree to an initial explicit made vision, success is very unlikely. And, at the same time a strong shared vision is required to make people enthusiastic, to mobilize them. It is almost mandatory that the start-up'er has a strong vision. A strong vision provides certainty in times of uncertainty that any change will bring. The shared vision must address the why, the what, and the how-to.

The creation of shared values and a shared vision go nicely together. To make a change last it is necessary that the implementor is part of this process. Not only to ensure that the momentum of the change continues, but it is harmonius as well. This will make the transition much smoother and increases the overall success. A good start is a job half done.

PDSA

No, not a typo. There is definitely an "S" in PDSA rather than a "C". Most likely the "C"-version is best known because of the same behavior Deming tried to correct on so many occasions.

The well-known PDCA and SPC were invented by Walter A. Shewart   The impression he made on W. Edwards Deming was such, that Deming became a great advocate of Shewart's methods. It lay out the foundation of how Demming helped Japan after being defeated in WOII to become one of the biggest industrial players in the world.

"I called it Japan in 1950 and onward the Shewhart cycle. It went into immediate use in Japan under the name of the Deming cycle, and so it has been called there ever since" Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming

Still, some of the credits have to go to Deming as well. In the words of Deming "Shewhart has the uncanny ability to make things difficult". So Deming spent a great deal on figuring out Shewhart's ideas, and devise ways to present them with his own twist. In this way the simple concept of PDCA came into existence.

The idea of PDCA was to act as a guide for all projects, not just quality projects.

PLAN	Objective Questions and predictions Plan to anwer the questions(who, what, where, when)
DO	Carry out the plan Collect the data Begin analysis of the data
STUDY	Complete the analysis of the data Compare data to predictions Summarize what was learned
ACT	What changes are to be made? Next cycle

When looking at the last bullet under Study, summarize what was learned, it is not hard to imagine why Deming changed the "C" into an "S". A check will only look whether something did or didn't meet the expectations. A study will look as well into why the deviations occured; both in a positive and negative sense.

In orde to do the Study correctly, the Plan must minimally contain the predictions (second bullet under Plan). And, ideally the Plan should contain the fundamental assumptions on which the predictions are based.

If you want to read a bit more about the background, there is a nice paper called Evolution of the PDSA Cycle.. It step-by-step shows how Shewhart's original ideas evolved into what we now know as PDSA.

Project Management versus Line Management

What is so special or different about Project Management? Nine out of ten will anser:

A project:

• Is unique
• Has (clear) predetermined deliverables
• Has a (fixed) start and finish
• Has a (limited) budget
• Works with a multi-disciplinair team

What we found is that regardless the type of industry, the above list is equally, if not more, applicable for non-projects - operations. Below is a generic description, but I like to invite you to verify if it is also applicable in your own experience.

Most products or services require quite a number of people that work together; purchasing, sales, production/operations. Even within a departement, especially in production/operations, there are different specialists involded. A multi-disciplinair team is not something unique to a project.

If a project finishes within 10% of the original budget, everybody is estathic. If an operations departement exceeds its budget by just over 5%, its manager isn't really hailed as a hero. A limited budget is not something unique to a project.

Most projects can get away with delivering the results later, sometimes months or even years later. Yes, there are some projects that will cause serious problems if the planned due-date is not met. Most organizations will get in serious problems when production/operations deliver later than originally promissed. Customers will switch suppliers when they can have a more reliable one; even when it comes at a premium. This because starting production/operations on time is necessary to meet the promissed due-dates; the amount of slack in production/operations is limited and starting later easily upsets the reliability of delivering other promissed products/services. A fixed start and finish is usually more important for production/operations than for projects.

The scope changes are quite normal in a project. It can be initiated by the impossibilities for whatever reason, changes in user requirements, whatever. The consequence is that quite a number of project deliver not the original agreed upon deliverables. This is for project not unusual. What is highly unusual is that production/operations delivers something different than what was promissed. Clear (predetermined) deliverables are more important in production/operations than for projects.

Like every project, every product/service is unique. If not because it was done by other people, by using different procedures, or by using (slightly) different materials then it is because of the perception and usage by the customer. If every product/service in production/operations was exactly the same, no quality control was necessary at any stage, no scrapping or reworking needed to be done. All products/services are unique.

Everybody feels that project management is different from line management. However the difference is not in what makes a project unique. The difference lays in what type of management is required to make the assignment a success.

http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2007/08/the-1015th-proj.html 

What we found was that the main difference between production/operations and projects lay in the necessity to manage uncertainty. That is, like in the cartoon, when you are 80⁺% certain  that without regular (pro)active intervention the assigment will not be completed successfully, you need project management. On the other hand, if you're 80⁺% certain  that without regular (pro)active intervention the assigment will be completed successfully, you should apply line management.

Doing the assignment without regular (pro)active intervention:

• 80⁺% probable FAILURE  -->  Project Management
• 80⁺% probable SUCCESS -->  Line Management

This rule of thumb also helps to decide which parts should be in-scope or out-of-scope in a project.