A long time colleague, Darrell Raymond, is always on the lookout for interesting ideas and connections. He sent me a note a few days back about the connection between Toyota and General Tommy Franks.
In Micheal Cusamano's Thinking Beyond Lean: How Multi-Project Management is Transforming Product Development at Toyota and Other Companies, he describes how Toyota has gone to heavy weight project managers who run vehicle development organizations that span several vehicle development centers. This Center Organization helps Toyota develop product more quickly than the traditional matrix organization. The illustration below is from the book (without permission).
The Center Organization also has a close resemblance to the way NASA is organized into Centers. Johnson Space Flight is the center leading the Crew Exploration Vehicle, which is my current engagement. This heavy weight approach has the following characteristics:
- Well respected, senior managers lead through their personal influence.
- These individuals are very knowledgeable about both business and technology.
- They possess and use communication skills and mechanisms.
- They assemble and mange cross functional teams of the same caliber.
By the way heavy weight is the capabilities of the manager NOT the processes used by that manager. Heavy weight means a seasoned, senior project, techncial and business leader - or in Franks case - military leader. What is common to both Toyota and Franks is the presence of these heavy weight managers. It may not be too much of a stretch to suggest that many of the problems in IT projects are due to the LACK of a heavy weight manager.
The outcome of this Center approach is to focus on the end-to-end aspects of a project. In aerospace the Integrated Product Team (IPT) and Systems of Systems (SoS) paradigm are used to construction the temporary organizations for the vendor to fulfill the needs of the Center.
In both cases a joint team is the result. The joining of the consumer and the supplier, both focused on the outcome - a new Toyota, a spacecraft or below the winning of a conflict.
In American Solider General Franks possesses most of the attributes of a heavy weight project manager. If you consider the elements of Operation Iraqi Freedom as a collection of project, then CENTCOM (Central Command) is the Center and Gen. Franks is the heavy weight project manager.
Franks spent most of his time networking with the service representatives and politicians that were members of the project teams. He speaks of this directly:
- Operation Iraqi Freedom was notable for the set of concurrent activities that were managed, unlike Desert Storm, which was very sequential in buildup, air war, and ground war.
- Concurrent or multi-project management is also key to Toyota's success
- The individual services all kept trying to interfere and take the initiative away from CENTCOM. In several cases they produced their own plans to put their own service at the core of the activity. The services by definition interested in a traditional matrix organization.
Frank's keeps saying over and over...
- Think joint. Think inter-service reliance.
- Everyone sees Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines on your name tags. They need to see JOINT.
- If we have to fight in Iraq we'll do it as a joint team. We will not take orders from any service chiefs in Washington. I'll get my orders from the Secretary of Defense and you'll take your orders from me. No service parochialism.
There is a illuminating quote from the Franks book.
I took great satisfaction in the jointness of the team I saw developing in CENTCOM. We had men and women in the As Sayliyah JOC, at Camp Doha in Kuwait, at the CAIC in Saudi Arabia, on ships in the Gulf, at the special operations FOBs, and back in Tampa (CENTCOM HQ), and they all functioned as a unified team. An Army Major could relay a request for close-air support from a Marine Captain on the ground to a flight of F-16's. A senior AF NCO at US Space Command in Colorado Springs could serve a Spacial Forces A-Team's requirement for reconnaissance satellite coverage. Navy ships could launch TLAMs on targets identified by a CIA Ground Branch Operator.
One of the advantages of Toyota's approach is said to be speed of development and rapid adaptation to circumstances. These are two of the advantages that Franks sought with his approach as well. Franks felt the need to make up for smaller forces with more speed - keeping to total energy delivered to the enemy the same.
Darrell had one of those "aha" moments when he saw Franks' lines and slices planning tool. 
The slices are the output he hoped to achieve (products) and the lines the capabilities he has to achieve those prod ucts with (centers). All the capabilities are inter-service capabilities, to be achieved by a combination of mechanisms.
The Capabilities Based Planning approach discussed earlier is the same capabilities paradigm Franks used, since the IT version is derived from the Defense business.
From Capabilities Based Planning, comes Events Based Planning and the IMP/IMS approach to schedules in which the increasing maturity of the project can be assessed in quantitative units of measure.
So What Does This Mean for Agile?
If the Toyota approach is interesting to the agile community, then the Franks description of teams, team work, cross boundary process should also be interesting. What can be learned first and foremost is the skills and experince of the primary leadership team is where it all starts - at Toyota and at CENTCOM.
