Project Management Tools | Disrupt The Project To Make The Big Improvements

Disrupt The Project To Make The Big Improvements

Get out of sync with what everyone else is doing.  When your organization is not succeeding and you keep doing what was done in the past, you are going to get the same results.  The path to improvement often means being disruptive.

Change is scary. Change is hard.  Much of what a good project manager or any manager does is to bring about change to the organization.

Half the time I was changing an organization my bosses hated me while it was going on.  Many folks talk a good story about kicking the organization up to the next level of performance.  When it comes to actually doing the things that need to be done, they often retreat back into the safety of the way things had been done in the past.  Happily, all my disenchanted bosses liked the final results and even asked me to stay on or to join them in another organization.

Here are some examples of out of sync and disruptive activities that proceeded significant improvements.  Some of these will be obvious.  Keep in mind that each is in a context of what was needed at the time.  These worked because they were appropriate based upon the current conditions in the organization.

1.  Work around the clock when nobody else does.  This is pretty straight forward.  I found it especially effective as a difference maker in government organizations for bringing about a new way of doing business.  I’ve also been in companies where just about everyone works long hours and weekends.  Often in these organizations, routinely long hours are not efficiently used hours.  In this environment, working smarter during those long hours becomes the key difference (see examples below).

2.  Report status with brutal honesty.  Monthly we reported on the status of our development progress  to the corporate VP of software development.  When everyone else was reporting their components being only a week or two within schedule, I was reporting our component was triple digit days behind schedule.  We could not all be right.  The corporate VP came to rely upon my updates to know where the overall project schedule stood (we ended up nine months late).  (See also Brutally Honest Project Management Tools.)

3.  Work only two hours a day.  I was sick.  Really sick.  I came in at six in the morning and by eight in the morning I simply could not function anymore.  In those two hours I would do what work I could, read my e-mail and any notes left on my desk.  I would send out e-mail replies and leave sticky notes on people’s desks with actions I needed or with answers folks requested.  This went on for a week.  This was one of the most productive weeks in my career.  Sometimes the best thing to do is to restrict the time, money, or resources available when things are not going well.

4.  Ignore the highest priority.  Senior management wanted to constantly know the status of the defects that stopped us from shipping our products.  We had dozens of people frantically and competitively working the management of those issues.  If you reported a breakthrough first to senior management, you got great recognition as being on top of the critical issues.  I ignored the critical issues.  Instead I showed senior management the overall trend of all the defects; the arrival rate of new defects; the overall rate at which we were fixing the defects.  It showed we would not ship for months when the goal was to ship in a week.  It showed that all the meetings and managers used to speed up the repair of defects were making no difference in the repair rate.  We finally shipped a few months later.  The stated highest priority was not the activity that was making the difference between success and failure.  (See also Project Management Defect Reports Are Your Best Friend.)

5.  Say it will take longer than requested.  We always shipped our products three to four months late.  Always.  As a product manager you got the biggest rewards for putting together a plan, usually by twisting lots of arms, that showed we can ship by the requested market window.  If you were late it was no big deal because other folks would inevitably not be able to make their promised schedule and besides we were always late.  Heretically, I said we would need three months longer than requested.  I showed recently shipped product schedules and how long things were taking.  I showed product defect curves and how long those curves were taking to complete.  I was told to never bring up such things again.  An emergency arose.  We would lose significant resources from our product development staff.  My plan was adopted as it was ready to go.  No one who had to commit to the schedule objected to it.  We shipped on time for the first time in memory.  It took no more time to produce this product than it did any previous product.  It was risky but the right thing to do was advocating a realistic schedule.  (See also Get The Project Management Schedule Right.)

If what you are doing is not personally risky and not making you sweat, you are probably not making a difference in the organization.  Not everyone needs to be making a difference.  The majority of folks just need to do a great job everyday.  But if you are a manager needing or wanting to improve your organization,  and you are not going against the grain and disrupting the organization, you are probably not on a path to successful improvement.

Filed Under Change Management | 3 Comments

Tagged With Change Management, Communication, Defect Arrival Rate Curve, Defects, Disruptive, Project Management Tools, Schedule

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