This Focused Performance Weblog is a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective. TOC is noted for its applications in Project Management and Multi-Project Management (Critical Chain) and Operations Management (Drum-Buffer-Rope), as well as in Marketing, Strategic Planning and Change Management (TOC Thinking Processes). If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
Sunday, May 09, 2004
Science and Art -- I just noticed on Technorati that Michael at Managing a Platform had some nice things to say about my weblog...
"It is something to get lost in."
...and there's no better way than flattery to get my attention. In his July 13, 2003 posting found at the site link (sorry I can't point to it directly, his direct links don't seem to be working) he writes about the science of planning and the art of execution...
"Once a plan is cast, resources found, and the architecture and product technology is understood, then the project can switch to art mode. By this, I mean, tracking actuals and detail project plans can generally be thrown out the window. We've adopted a build plan, which lists major feature deliveries on a weekly basis and use that for the basic project tracking. The art comes in, as the tug and pull of daily tactical decisions and a heavy amount of 'open door' communication with the team, and 'management by walking around' help to minimize surprises and keep everything moving."
I'm in general agreement about "tracking actuals." Actuals are about the past, what is done, and what doesn't matter any more to the success of the project (although they might -- and that's a big might -- have some use for assessing future efforts, but I would rather spend time on subjective lessons learned than on the capture and analysis of fuzzy actuals).
What does matter, however, is the plan of what remains and what has shown up that wasn't in the original plan, especially if promises have been made about what is to be delivered when. This doesn't have to be a "detailed plan." Details are often within the level of noise, or a matter not of project management, but task management. And after all, most of those details fall into areas that are probably not related to the critical chain of the total project, and therefore can often be absorbed with little impact to the project. It's merely knowing which of the feature deliveries are critical to any timing promises and keying in on the dependencies associated with them.
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