“All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved” - Sun Tzu, Chinese Philosopher
I'm starting a new engagement to triage an Army program that has "gone off track," and needs to be put back to GREEN. The kick off of the 10 week effort, before the Government comes in June to surveil the systems, people, and processes designed to keep the program GREEN.
The start of the engagment always starts with a wall of truth that contains the work activities. There is a large wall in the conference room, with butcher paper, swim lanes, and sticky notes. The swim lanes are:
- People - who is doing what, when
- Processes - what is being done, by whom, when
- Tools - how is this done, when
This people, processes, and tools catch phrase is usually just that, a catch phrase. We need to turn this into actionable outcomes.
- People - in the best of worlds, you get to pick the people on the team. Try as hard as you can to do this. If no, have a strict screening process. Hold each person accoutable for their contribution. By tough on those not meeting those commitments. It's NOT about the self actualizaiton of the staff - at least as the first priority. It's about project performance. Self actualization comes for performance. Projects are team sports. Teams as assembled to win.
- Processes - process is king once you have the right people. Following the process is how teams win. The process can be loose or strict. The process can be agile or it can be full DoD 5000.02. The notion that agile is not formal, strict, and structured is of course nonsense. Doing Scrum - right - requires more discipline and rigor than some open ended PMBOK style processes.
- Tools - are nice. Tools remove tedium from the project. But tools only work is you have a process and people who follow the process.
