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.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Optimism, Realization, Despair, and the Finish Line -- Jeffrey Philips (yes, again) has recently completed a series defining these four phases of a project. Some of good advice found in it include...
...The "work" they do early in the project is not wasted if it is used to ensure the team can be more efficient and effective later in the project. There remains the temptation to skip all of this upfront stuff - just to plunge into the project without any preparation. If your team is cohesive, the more time you spend developing a common approach, the more efficient and effective you team will be in the later project phases. (Optimism)
...At the end of this phase (approximately 50% of the time elapsed), I'd recommend that you refactor the entire project. By that I mean reassess the scope of the project, the amount of work completed to date, the amount of time left and the velocity and acceleration of the project team. It will be much easier at this point to carefully consider the requirements and features/tradeoffs or to ask for more resources now than it will be much later in the project. (Realization)
...the project manager and the project sponsor need to do everything in their power to remove distractions, roadblocks and other people or problems that may hinder the team from getting "in the zone". (Despair)
...Give yourself some time at the end of the project do debrief... The Finish Line
View Frank Patrick's profile
