This Focused Performance Weblog started life as a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective, but is in the process of evolving towards primary content on interactive and mobile marketing. Think of it as about Focusing marketing messages for enhanced Performance. If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
Tuesday, June 08, 2004
It Ain't the Tasks. It's the Project. -- In a discussion of task versus project management, Jack Vinson points out something important and worth repeating...
"What should be of primary importance is the impact of those tasks on the project, not whether an individual task was completed 'on time.' One way that Critical Chain Project Management helps with this is to ask for 'how much more time do you need' to complete a task, rather than 'are you going to be done on time.' This lets you have conversations like, 'if you are able to finish a day earlier, we can get started on the subsequent activities and bring in the project sooner.' Or, 'that's fine, there is another set of tasks that we are focussed on completing in the next two weeks to bring the project in early.'"
After a couple months of getting comfortable understanding the operations at my new company (Oh what a life consultants have, not having to worry about the day-to-day while setting up for the future.), I've started having just such a series of conversations pointing out the exact same thing.
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