pm-lotus by Howard Vaughan

Posts Tagged ‘Quality’

Much more than a Memory Jogger

Among all the tools at our disposal for managing projects, programs and portfolios, checklists are perhaps the simplest and most productive means of building consistency in work practices. Checklists are useful in almost every field of human endeavor, and in particular where repeatability and systematic action drive performance. Yet they are still much under-used in the planning and managing of projects.

As a good friend of mine, Nick Gogerty, recently posted in Checklists, hedge funds and human behaviour, checklists provide for better outcomes – both individual and team. And the more collective experience that goes into the creation of a checklist, the more value it will have. Well thought-out checklists are indispensable wherever there is a need for control, risk reduction, rapid response or safety – as doctors, flight crew, investors and others the world over can testify, the checklist provides efficient guidance, increased confidence and focus under stress (see The Checklist Manifesto – How to Get things Right - a great-sounding read that Nick highly recommends).

Twelve Checks for Planning

Likewise for project managers – checklists can be used for all manner of things. Where training builds knowledge, checklists facilitate application.  Here is a high level twelve-point checklist for use during project planning:

1. Have the needs and concerns of all key stakeholders been considered and resolved?
2. Does the project have an overall approved mission statement defining the scope, schedule and resources/budget?
3. Has the relative flexibility among scope, schedule, resources and budget been determined?
4. Have all project deliverables been identified and described in detail with unambiguous completion criteria?
5. Are roles and responsibilities defined and agreed upon for all project team members?
6. Has an appropriately detailed work breakdown structure been created with input from key team members?
7. Has a credible schedule with identifiable critical path and late schedule been developed from the WBS and optimized within the project constraints?
8. Have milestones been included in the schedule to track major events, completed phases and/or deliverables and external dependencies?
9. Have workload commitments been identified for each week of the project and agreed to by team members and their managers?
10. Have response plans been developed for the most significant threats to project success?
11. Has a change management process been defined and agreed to by all key stakeholders?
12. Has the governance structure for the project been established with an agreed sponsorship role and expectations set for review frequency and format?

One of the features of checklists is that they can be designed to extend hierarchically, such that a sub-checklist could be developed to facilitate any or all of the checks above (e.g. a stakeholder analysis checklist or a risk management checklist). The PMI, training firms and PMOs would do well to promote checklists more strongly – project managers like to use checklists; not many want to read through an overweight methodology. And managers like checklists because they improve quality and instill consistency. For the converted, I’ll have more checklists in future posts.

How do you know for sure when something is declared “Done”, that it really is? By defining completion criteria. These little nuggets are one of the single most important – yet frequently overlooked – aspects of project planning.

Completion criteria root out ambiguity (see The First Law). They align stakeholders, team members and the customer on the conditions for acceptance and validation of the project outputs. And they improve estimating quality by enhancing understanding of the desired work result.

Its a Binary Thing – “done” or “not done”

Completion criteria should be defined first for the project deliverables, which in doing so will actually help identify tasks for the WBS, and second for (ideally) each task in the WBS itself. Well-written criteria:

• Are defined by the deliverable or task owner
• Clearly state the characteristics and attributes of the output  – “what done looks like”
• May include the measurement and validation requirement – e.g. “who reviews what”
• Are defined in a binary way (i.e. totally unambiguous).

Can we really do this for every task? You decide – it’s a tradeoff between increased planning effort vs. increased risk. But consider that while this may initially seem onerous, the reality is that it does not take much more effort to write a statement or a couple of bullets specifying what ‘complete’ means (for example in the Notes field in Microsoft Project). Put in the context of the project overall, it’s a seriously small price to pay for dramatically increased clarity and reduced risk of misunderstandings.

Most projects are underplanned. They’re already late before they start. For a host of reasons – the usual suspects include a lack of project management discipline, inadequate tools and training, unclear objectives, top-down influence, overworked and under pressure team members – projects get planned with insufficient detail.

The reality is that detail is the basis for accuracy in all projects. Plans that lack appropriate detail can’t be believed. This is what I call the Second Law of project management.

The consequence of a lack of detail is a project suicide spiral:

Understate what’s needed… Misunderstand what ‘done’ looks like… Miss stuff out… Underestimate time and effort requirements to do the work… Overcommit resources to unrealistic schedules…
Present bad news to customer.

Breakdown Checks

Without a credible plan, a project manager lacks credibility with the team and stakeholders. Only when we get to the detail is the full extent of work revealed, which means developing a great Work Breakdown Structure. Here are a few WBS must-do’s:

• Ensure tasks are small enough so that-
  • Estimates of effort and duration are as accurate and credible as possible
  • Task durations are typically no greater than the time between progress updates
• Define explicitly what ‘done’ means-
  • Especially for any task that is unfamiliar, complex or difficult to break down
• Assign a single owner to each task-
  • Have them verify that the expected workflow minimizes likelihood of any missing tasks
• Use a checklist of often forgotten tasks-
  • e.g. meetings, defect resolutions, reviews and approval cycles.

They say the devil is in the details – and just looking for a chance to cause trouble. Good process and a little extra planning time will build protection.

(See all 5 Laws summarized in The 5 Laws of Effective Project Management)

When I first started in the project management services business, I was repeatedly led to believe that the construction industry was the beacon of leadership in project management maturity. My own experience over the years tended to question that wisdom and now the truth is out that this is indeed all nonsense. According to a recent survey by the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB), which represents 42,000 members and sets standards for the management of the total building process, the construction industry has much to learn about project management.

The Shocking Truth

Not a towering force in project management

The survey results are based on data from 73 companies and over 2,000 projects. Its conclusions are available on the CIOB website – you can also watch an interesting video of the CIOB president Keith Pickavance presenting the results at the Project Management Asia Conference 2008. They make for a highly uncomplimentary denunciation of the state of project management practices in the industry- for example:

• less than 15% used a linked network to define the schedule
• more than 50% used only simple bar charts
  • (no chance of a critical path)
• more than 50% used paper (not computerized) records
• less than 15% kept logs of changes
  • (not much good in court)
• 95% did not report delays to progress because they:
  • hoped no-one would notice
  • hoped they could catch up
  • did not want to upset the client
  • thought they could blame someone else.

Its not a pretty picture. Little wonder then, that the industry is dogged by delays, compensation claims and disputes.

The Way Forward

Clearly there is a need for some serious project management skills development. In the words of Mr. Pickavance himself:

We have no standards, we have no training, we have no qualifications.

All of which should be manna from heaven for project management educators, particularly in those regions where construction investment is being pumped up to help resurrect limp economies. Assuming of course that the building firms are open to changing their ways.