Pat Weaver suggested that 3M Sticky Notes are a good way to capture information about projects - and they are. Pat also suggests this is a social process, which it is sorta.
Let's start with a picture of the sticky notes on the wall after the dust has settled:
This is the picture of tranquility after a 2 weeks of haranguing by the team on the content of the "wall." This collection of stickies represents the Integrated Master Plan for a orbiting space craft test vehicle. But at this resolution, it could be any non-trivial product or process.
Like Pat's suggestion, this is an interactive but not always sociable process. The interest of each contributor is ferociously defensed during this process. Fixed time and bounded budgets are the starting point. As well, the simple fact the ego's are involved drives some of the conversation.
It is pure fantasy that the extremely talented engineers and their Control Account Managers simply all come together and sing camp fire songs to build this Integrated Master Plan. I've led these efforts in a variety of domains and contexts within those domains, and it just doesn't happen in the ways the "consultants" and book authors what us to believe. But it does get done and the team is better off for it, for a simple reason - we ALL have a stake in the Mission Success.
In the outer lobby of this building is a large banner ...
100% Mission Success
That's the starting point for any successful process, social or not.
Stickies are OK, but then What?
With the stickies on the wall, what's the next step? There are several choices, but the step from the picture above is to move the contents of the wall to a Mind Map. We use the MindJet tool to capture the arrangement of the Stickies as they are being developed on the wall.
From there several things happen:
- The map is turned into the Integrated Master Plan structure as defined by Integrated Master Plan and Integrated Master Schedule Preparation and Use Guide. This is the starting point for the work we do as Program Planning and Controls professionals.
- From there a Performance Measurement Baseline (PMB) is started when MindJet exports the map to MSFT Project.
- The Work Breakdown Structure is built in the same way. Monetized work packages are attached and the whole mess is placed on baseline.
- A second visual tool that uses the same source file is PERT Chart Expert, from www.criticaltools.com. This makes a picture of the IMP/IMS in a time phased for an hangs on the wall.
There are several critical aspects of this approach that are not obvious at first.
- The BIg Visible Chart is the key to creating a shared understanding. Some folks in the agile community suggested this a few years back. Well they were 2 decades too late. We had BVC's hanging on the entry hallway in Building O6, TRW, One Space Park, Redondo Beach, in the late 70's. What the BVC does is just that - make everything on the program visible in a single BIG chart. To do this of course you need a plotter and a BIG wall. The wall is called the "wall of truth." If it ain't on the wall it ain't true.
- Putting information on the wall moves it from a little window - you're laptop screen - to a big window the wall. But it also moves it from personal control to group. Lean and Kaizen process know this. When an individual is presenting information there is a naturally tendency to "defend" and "attack" that information. When the information is shared on the wall it moves from individual to group ownership. Again this is something developed in the late 70's at TRW and other A&D firms.
The key to success is to get from the wall to the Performance Measurement Baseline and start the Planning and Controls processes.
- Do we know what done looks like?
- Can we manage the risks along the way?
- Who is accountable for what?
- How do we measure progress?
- What is our forecast for completion - time, money, technical performance?
