Dan Ward - a favorite Blogger and Author in Defense AT&L - has a nice little post about the principles of the US Navy Seals.
- Humans are more important than hardware
- Quality is better than quantity
- Special Operations Forces cannot be mass produced
Connection with Project Management and Project Controls
I'm home for awhile from a 9 week stint on a large US Army program, rebaselining the next increment of the contract.
- When we don't have the right people in the right roles all the technology - planning and cost tools - provide little value to our efforts. The Control Account Managers needed to be "really good" to get their Budget Change Requests in shape for baselining within the allocated time period. No tool is going to fix a poorly formed BCR and Work Package flow.
- Having all the numbers line up and the Work Package duration be "credible" in the right sequence to maintain the needed schedule margin and cost margin is a critical success factor. This margin is calculated using Monte Carlo simulation, per DID 81650.
- The core cadre of PP&C specialist is rare these days. The training, experience, and skills needed to pull the Performance Measurement Baseline together does not come from books. It comes for Training, Skills, and Experience. Hand On "doing" of the work of PP&C. Same for being a program manager. Being a Control Account Manager is not learned from a book either.
What this means is:
- Tools are 3rd place every time
- People and Process are synergistic. You have have good people and a poor process and be in the ditch. You can have a good process and poor people and be in the same ditch.
- Good people can over come poor process b y making up their own processes, but that process is not scalable.
- Good people and a good process can over come the lack of tools for awhile, but cannot be sustained.
We us a quote around tools and process.
Did it once, and I'll do it by hand. Do it 2 to 3 times and I'll write a VBA macro. Do it 50 times and I buy a "real" tool
In all case though it starts with competent, trained, skilled, experienced, and most of all motivated people.
All success flows from there.
