Process Improvement In A Complex World

Much of the discussion around making improvements in processes fails to address the governance aspects of a business or organization. Instead it focuses on the personal aspects. Agile development of a software team, without the corporate impacts. The desire to stop doing something without an actual replacement, under the guise of we're exploring. Our the mention of the term intent of the commander without understanding that filling out that intent requires complete capabilities to act in in the absence of direct supervision.

My project management maturity was changed forever at Rocky Flats, under the management of senior leaders with experience and skill formed in the US Navy. The book Making the Impossible Possible is the story of that project and the learnings that can be applied in any high risk, complex, high reward domain.

Making the impossible possible from Glen Alleman

The term Intent of the Commander is actualized in the concept of the Plan of the Day. Here's an actual plan of the day for shipboard life. This notion of plan of the day was applied late in the Rocky Flats program. Before that  we had Plan of the Week and then Plan of the Month. The approach is very simple.

What do we plan to get done at the end of this period (day, week, month? Write that down, establish some measures of performance and effectiveness for those ourcomes. Measure them, take corrective actions if they don't match the expectations. Repeat until done.