Visual Project Management

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 shape […]

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 focus

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 focus

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 the

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 the

The vertical columns of process steps are complemented with horizontal rows of….whatever is most relevant for you to manage in order to fulfill the process steps. These can be (but are not limited to): • Individual people, such as engineers, designers, assemblers, machinists, etc. • Teams of people, identified by function, department, location, etc. • Job

The existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, once observed that, “Hell is other people.” He wasn’t quite right. Hell is other people, in a closed room, looking to assign blame for yet another missed deadline. The problem is not that project participants are innately misanthropic. In fact, we believe they naturally find satisfaction in productive collaboration. The real

This is where most project plans begin and end: in the dark. Why are projects late? If you’re responsible for the performance of a project team, you may be tempted to blame the usual suspects: it’s hard to get everyone working together; you can’t get enough resources, you need to start projects sooner to finish earlier;