So many of us have often heard that “a failure to plan is a plan to fail,” so we grow confident that successful planning leads to successful project completion. The old adage isn’t necessarily untrue. Having a plan is crucial. But research shows that the common approaches to project management fail to produce the outcomes … Continue reading
Category: Visual Project Management
Last week, I shared an overview on the Improved Coordination level of the Viewpoint Project Execution Maturity model, which focuses on achieving reliable delivery and improving communication among remote teams. If you missed it, you can read that post here. If collaboration in one location seems challenging, then collaboration among far-flung teams in different offices—or … Continue reading
In kindergarten, we learned some simple skills: how to work together, how to share, how to communicate with others, how to be kind and make friends. They were basic social skills that would help us in the long run to get what we want out of life and out of our work. As we grew … Continue reading
Complex projects have complex problems. Problems so complex that to an insider, those closest to the project, they seem impossible to fix. Picture this: Your project has one goal: Build a mountain. Now, think of your project as two tectonic plates: one is called Planning, one is called Results. You are standing right in the … Continue reading
Do you feel like you and your project team have a good grasp of what’s coming towards you? Or are you the beneficiary of “surprises” and last minute problems that put your project in peril? We find that the biggest problem that project teams face is that they are simply unable to clearly see where … Continue reading
What do managers do when their project teams are unsuccessful? You probably do what most managers do and send them for project management skills training. There is some evidence that shows more skills equates to better performance. But this relationship between training and project performance is really just a correlation. Yes, training equips your team … Continue reading
There is constant tension among project team members when their individual or functional objectives are not in alignment with the project’s objectives (i.e., maximizing resource efficiency is not the same as increasing project velocity). Famed management guru Eli Goldratt once said, “Show me how you measure me, I’ll show how to behave.” His point: metrics … Continue reading
Multi-tasking: the dark art of doing many things…poorly. Every time an engineer, a designer, an operator – or anybody – has to switch from one task to another, valuable time is lost. When the former task is resumed, more time is absorbed coming back to speed or reconstructing the necessary tooling. On either end, the … Continue reading
Multi-tasking: the dark art of doing many things…poorly. Every time an engineer, a designer, an operator – or anybody – has to switch from one task to another, valuable time is lost. When the former task is resumed, more time is absorbed coming back to speed or reconstructing the necessary tooling. On either end, the … Continue reading
By posting all the project tasks to ONE board, and attributing a status to each task, your team instantly moves its attention from a competing body of tasks to a SINGLE project, openly displayed. In this new context, what takes priority? Whatever is most likely to threaten the completion deadline. What threatens completion? Look at … Continue reading