Herding Cats

Help Wanted

The current edition of Aviation Week & Space Technology has an article titled "Help Wanted: Good program management starts at the top, which could be the  industry's problem."

The crux of the article is we've lost the leadership focus on the programmatic aspects of programs for a variety of reasons.

The question (of program success) does not come down to technology or even money, but the ability by industry and its government customer to lead and deliver on their promise. 

This problem is not unique to aerospace and defense. It is common in the commercial side of projects as well. 

According to a yearlong industry review, hosted by AW&ST and culminating in a conference here this month (Phoenix), industry leader believe they have made real progress in implementing best practices - but getting people and programs to follow them thoroughly and consistently remains the greatest shortfall.

One of the key challenges in our industry of PROGRAM MANAGEMENT (my emphasis).

The group, lead by Price Waterhouse Coppers (PwC) says the first step in improving performance is by building "objective and honest" assessment of the current state of industry's program management. The ... good planning, discipline, and communication within the projects...

To create the proper management structure to support program execution...with facets of strategy, risk, cost, budgets, planning, task schedules and technical milestones are integrated. Program managers are ... proactive in managing change...

The A&D partner at PwC said...

We believe that the aerospace and defense industry must be proactive in elevating its program management effectiveness, adopting balanced framework to mitigate or control risks and to cushion the impact when the customer requirements change.

Now let's ask some hard questions about project management

• Do the projects you work as a project manager have a disciplined approach to cost, budget, planning, task schedules and technical milestones?
• Do the projects you work elevate the project management effectiveness, adopting a balanced frameworks to mitigate or control risk and soften the blow when requirements change?

Why do do many projects not have control controls or even the rudimentary notion of budgeting? From some of the comments here lately, it seems many projects operate in the dark ages and are happy to continue to do so because, "it will frighten the developers."

Failure is a self-fulling prophecy, an unavoidable consequence of the tolerance - or even encouragement of the idea that full management engagement in cost, schedule, and technical performance measurement is simply too much work, too much "management," too much governance.

Ballmer Blames Security for Vista’s Failure

An interesting headline from Channel Insider about the failure of Vista.

Now I'm no Steve Ballmer, but there is probably not one person on the planet that would say to Microsoft, sure make my next operating system secure and while you're at it, make my secure operating system a complete pain in the ass to use, suck up all the memory I have, make it a pig, a big fat pig, in terms of response time. And while you're at it make my secure operating system ever so slightly incompatible with print drivers, network drivers, and loads of other 3rd party applications that worked perfectly fine under Window XP.

Yea give me lots of that.

Windows 7?

Yea right no upgrade path from XP except to nuke my machine, which I've spent 3 years tuning to perfection.

Our house now has 2 Mac Books that run MSFT Office and most other Windows apps just fine thank you. I'm still stuck with Windows laptops for work, so I have no choice. But MSFT needs to think long and hard how they're going to play in the personal computer operating system business with Apple around.

Want To Be A Professional, Then Start By Acting Like A Professional

There is a debate going around the project management community about whether a Project Manager is a Professional. It's a slightly silly debate in the end, for the simple reason - in my opinion - that whether a PM is classified as a Professional or not will have little impact on the success of failure of projects.

Looking at other professions. Doctors, Airline Pilots, Lawyers. The certification of the professional status of these fields - for the most part - is rigorous. I know about two of these fields - Lawyers and Airline Pilots. Both hold "licenses" to performance their professional duties. Both professions have numerous examples of un-professional behavior. It is rare that we read about lawyers killing people. Airline pilots do at a rising rate in 2009.

But airliners still crash due to "pilot error," people still die on the operating room table due to negligence, lawyers get sued themselves for misconduct. These appear to be rare, but in fact they are not. A check of the Stats at the National Institutes of Health, or the stats at the National Transportation Board aviation accident database.

To the question of Professional Project Managers

There are upsides and downsides to being labeled a Professional Project Manager. Professional are liable for their actions in ways non-professionals are not. But there is a question of credentialing. Credentialing refers to mandated licensing and voluntary certification programs.

The "profession" of project management at this point is a voluntary certification program world wide. For example registered nurses are licensed to practice, but board certification allows them to access to specialty areas.

There is the prestige of being called a professional. And let's not forget those who provide training, education, and certification for professional designation. They've got lots to sell us and money to be made advancing the profession.

This by the way is why state certification of professional engineers is an good thing - since the state is not in the business of making professionals out of the engineers, but protecting the public from their actions. The states issue licenses

The step to become a Professional - whether PM's ever become professionals or not - is the start acting like a professional.

• Keep up to date on all things project management
• Become a member of organizations related to the "profession" of project management
• Be informed about matter concerning the "profession" of project management

Now to the Point

If you want to start down the road to acting like a professional, start by reading journals that contain information needed to be a professional

• Project Management Institutes Project Management Journal - irregardless of your opinion about PMI, the PM Journal has peer reviewed papers about the "profession" of project management
• International Council of Systems Engineering (INCOSE) - certifies Systems Engineers
• Society of Cost Estimating and Analysis (SCEA) - is a cost estimating professional organization, whose Journal of Cost Analysis and Parametrics contains papers focused on cost and its impact on projects mostly in the US Government Defense sector.
• International Society of Parametric Analyst (ISPA) - is the parametric side of cost analysis
• Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering (AACE) - is similar to SCEA is some ways, but heavily focused on the construction industry.
• IEEE Engineering Management Society - the management profession in the IEEE
• The National Society for Professional Engineers - has something to say about project management in the PE context.

What Does All This Mean?

First of there is to be any value from certifying - in some yet unknown way - project managers, there must be a clear and concise beneficial outcome to both those being certified and those making use of those that have been certified.

This top down approach - defining the unassailable beneficial outcome - seems to be missing from many organizations and individuals who have proposed assessing the capabilities of project managers in the context of a "profession."

Just as aside, everywhere I have every worked, the units of measure of this unassailable beneficial outcome have money in it somewhere.

So Show Me the Money

If we had Professional Project Managers - or even certified to some level of skill, knowledge, or competency - how can project success be improved? How can money be saved? How can safety be increased? A few of those annoying little things that people with the money ask, when someone asks them to part with it.

An Open Challenge

For those of late who proffer a solution to the issues of project success - this includes all who have a collection of "magic beans," who claim an alternate to PMBOK and us PMP's who put it use, who rail agianst Prince2 and its practitioners, who consider Agile of all stripes inappropriate or the opposite - the second coming, IMP/IMS, or any other project management system currently in place and being applied- here's the challenge

Go work a program or project. Show us that your method, assessment, certification, or what ever you're pitching actually does result in a statistically significant increase in the probability of success of projects or programs.

When this evidence arrives, call me and we'll see how to put it to work on the programs we work.

In the absence of this evidence, I'll consider the message you're sending as just another sales scheme to capture my money.

Useful Project Management Quotes

Many times I'm sitting in a meeting or driving along thinking about projects I'm working on, or even better riding my bike far away from home and a thought comes to me about how to wrap up a complex concept in a simple phrase.
Here are some that have come to the surface lately...

• In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is - Yogi Berra. Yogi has lots of PM quotes. But this is one of my favorites. I can''t tell you the number of times I've heard someone speak about how "we could do this," or "we could do that."
• Never Confuse Effort with Results - if you're measuring effort as your progress, you're not measuring the right thing
• Brevity is the Soul of Wit — Lord Polonius to Hamlet. Keeping it simple works for all forms of communication. Just as well for project plans, presentations, and all things related to delivering outcomes from projects. But it must be "simple enough" and not too simple.
• Trying is just a noisy way of saying no progress — Warren Bennis. I hear this all the time. "We'll try to have that server up and running by Tuesday." "I'll try to get that order closed by month end." This goes along with Hope is not a Strategy.
• Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat —Sun Tzu. You need both a Plan and a Schedule. The Plan tells you what  deliverable are needed to produce the needed business or technical capabilities. The Schedule tells you when the work to produce those deliverables needs to be performed.
• Plans are nothing; planning is everything — Dwight D. Eisenhower. This is a famous, often misused and mis-quoted quote. It is not a excuse for not planning. It is a direct order to plan. The Plan is the Strategy for Successfully delivering the value from a project. Plans changes. That's the role of a Plan. Anyone suggesting otherwise is not a Project Manager.
• When planning for a year, plant corn. When planning for a decade, plant trees. When planning for life, train and educate people — Chinese Proverb. Know your planning horizon.
• It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be — Isaac Asimov. "What is Plan B?"
• The facts are always friendly, every bit of evidence one can acquire, in any area, leads one that much closer to what is true  —Carl Rogers. Measure progress ONLY with measures of Physical Percent Complete. The passage or time, the consumption of resources, and the estimates of progress from the provides of progress are NEVER credible assessments.

Gas Prices??

    I almost never make a political comment. But having been born, raised and schooled in the Texas Panhandle where crude oil, refining, and petrochemicals are part of the culture I have some knowledge of the macroeconomics of gasoline.
    The cost structure of a gallon of gas goes like this:

• Crude Oil landed in Houston Texas - 73%
• Federal, State, and Local Taxes - 11%
• Refining the crude into a gasoline product - 10%
• Distribution, marketing, buying agreements - 6%

The price of crude is set on the commodities market(s). It's a futures trading economy. Today light crude (oil with a low wax content) closed at 127.97 / Bbl. There are many other "crudes," West Texas Intermediate is what we grew up on the late 50's and early 60's in Pampa, TX who's famous person was Randy Matson and the Pampa High School Marching band of which I was a proud Trombone player.
    So when we hear the current and potential leaders of our nation speak about the "windfall profits" of folks like Exxon/Mobile, we need to understand a bit of the microeconomics of gasoline production.

• Exxon/Mobil (and all refiners) have to buy raw materials in order to make finished products. They have to pay in US Dollars of course and they have to buy very large quantities. This is their business so they usually get really good deals, but the spot price drives their bulk buying. And they buy at the source, paying the transportation costs, usually in their own machines.
• Since 73% of the cost of a gallon of gas is crude, when crude goes up, gas goes up. Kinda a 1-to-1 connection, since the demand outstrips the supply, storage is not a good option.
• The prices of crude - being a futures market commodity - is driven by speculation. This is the purpose of a futures market. It's the way capital markets work. The way we want them to work. The way Adam Smith described how they shown work.
• Why the price rises is itself a hugely complex process, but basically it's because there is a sense of shortage, driven by fear of a sense of shortage. "Buy now, because it's going to get more expensive later."
• Exxon/Mobil's refining costs are driven mainly by the cost of capital to buy crude and other consumables, operations and maintenance (stuff break all the time), and labor. All of which have risen a bit. But since refining accounts for only 10% of the total cost structure, any increase in labor, operations or the cost of money is discounted by 90%.
• Since Exxon/Mobil buys most of its products in US Dollars in the US, and that dollar has itself been devalued, it takes more dollars to buy a barrel of crude today than last year. Resulting in higher effective crude prices

    So in the end the oil companies are not the evil doers our candidates would like us to believe. Any candidate, all candidates, from city council to the White House. As we who live in the County are fond of saying of the Peoples Republic of Boulder City Council - "they were asleep in the macroeconomics class."
    Do the math, it starts with futures pricing, which is based on fear and flows to the tank of my shinny new Honda Civic. Thanks to a bit of foresight the Civic replaces a 1996 Suburban 4WD, small block 350, 1600 that sucked 14MPG on a good day going down hill. The oil companies are not our enemy. Any suggestion that our problems can be solved by "forcing prices down," is a simple indication that the speaker did not read Adam Smith, or any other economics book.
    As Pogo said, "Yep son, We've met the enemy and he is us." - Walt Kelly, on a poster on Earth Day, 1970.

Customer Service

    I rarely write about personal experiences, but this morning is an exception. We're getting a laptop for our daughter's graduation gift. No Apple because they're too expensive, sorry. I misplaced the order confirmation and couldn't track down the purchase through other means. All I wanted to know was - did the order go through and what day will it arrive.
    Go on the Dell site, click on the "call me back" page. Phone rings in 2 seconds, live person comes on in 10 seconds. I explain my situation. I didn't purchase this through my normal Dell account. First phone number didn't bring up the order. Second number did. He confirmed the address, the build is in process and the delivery date. Reconfirmed the email and while we were on the phone the new confirmation email arrived. All is well for a nice "Sea Green" laptop loaded with college girl software to arrive by the graduation party.
    Contrast that with United Airlines and a butt simple request to change a flight from the evening to the morning. 10 minute holds, endless walking through the voice response system, finally reach on off shore customer service person. It's not their fault they have to work for United, but it's my fault for flying United to maintain my 1K status.
    The total Dell transaction took less than 2 minutes. You can't change a flight in less than 15. United should hire Dell to run customer service.

Charts for Metrics

I'm involved with two clients on "bottom up" performance metrics engagements. Most of our engagements start at the top with a Balanced Scorecard and work our way down. But these clients have asked us to take their current metrics and "improve" them both informationally and visually.

I can do the informational improvements but I've always struggled a bit with the visual side. We have a PR/Ad firm but they focus on our own branding, design and media - not our client's needs

I can across BonaVista while surfing tonight. It's got many of the things I need to move from my simple minded approach to something better.

I found BonaVista from a MIndJet forum that described how to use Mind Manager as a desktop. I haven't worked out the details yet, but this will change how we since information for a client can be on the desktop in the same way it is in the planning and executing "mind maps" that are the basis of our practice.

Change of Venue

I've moved from one consulting firm to another. My tenure as a Program Architect completed with the submission and transition to Phase I of a major spacecraft procurement initiative. This experience was a wonderful opportunity to expand my experience in Program Management, risk assessment, and general management skills. Many of the processes used in these programs are directly applicable to IT and software development.

I've taken a position as a Practice Director in a local consulting firm Lewis & Fowler. My focus is on developing a Balanced Scorecard and Performance Management practice for IT organizations. Parallel to this practice is an existing group delivering program and project management services.

As agile software development moves into corporate IT departments, the management processes surrounding Scrum and XP become more important. IT Governance, Corporate and IT strategy, and program performance are the baseline principles by which boards, governance committees and stakeholder judge the some "value" produced by IT departments.

I'll be focusing on these areas as well as core project management as time permits.

Our Love Affair with Toyota

Much is written about Toyota and the Toyota Production System. Agile and Lean cite the TPS as the example of how it should done. There is now doubt that Toyota and the TPS are successful. I personally don't like their cars, preferring instead to own a Honda Pilot and Acura TL. Their too soft and mushy for my tastes. But the market speaks much clearer and their is no doubt that "own" their segment.

While working on a presentation on Balanced Scorecard and Performance Measurement, I was digging through my pile of Strategy+Business (A Booz Allen journal) the article and found "What are the Measures That Matter?" Issue 26, First Quarter 2002. It had a comparison between Toyota and not-Toyota approaches to performance measurement.

Some interesting points:

• Toyota has been refining its manufacturing systems over 60 years.
• There are very few companies like Toyota in terms of organization, culture, history, and their control over the supply chain (except maybe WalMart).
• Toyota does not ask its dealers for forecasts, it builds to order.
• It use few quantitative indicators, instead making use of shop floor controls. Each work station is a supplier to the following station.
• The design of the machine tools are build around retooling and retuning, not necessarily around making a specific part. The dream of flexible manufacturing lives at Toyota.
• The plants give up most of their cost accounting practices, replacing it with short term assessment of work. Managing by the numbers on the shop floor is not the primary approach at Toyota. At the corporate level it certainly is, but it does not flow down to the detailed work process. Instead they depend on production management to manitain the macro flow of finished goods, manage scrap and control costs within the production process.
• The design of the cars is focused on the reduction of labor and scrap. The secondary outcome of all the benfits of not having to do detailed cost accounting. They certaintly know how much their cars cost to the mil, like any other manufacturer, but they do it in the Toyota Way. The way GE does it in the GE Way and HP in the HP Way.

It may be that Toyota is the "inimitable anomaly" in the world of work management process.

Even at that, they have somethings to teach us. But care must be taken to apply these lessons in the right way to the right problems with the right controls. Without this constraints, the TPS will become a tool looking for a problem. And Toyota will simply continue to evolve while we are trying to clone the past and make it into our future.