The Regenerate Web

"I tried," Adelle shrugged, "but we didn't make a whole lot of progress. What we ended up with was mostly crap."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"My team has been trying to figure out the best way to solve this problem and there are a bunch of ideas, but we just can't reach a consensus on which way to proceed. I am afraid to get started until I know for sure that everyone is on board. But every time we make a compromise, other people drop off and want something different."

"Sounds like Congress," I laughed. "What happens to the quality of the solution every time you compromise?"

"That's the real problem. It's the compromising that kills it. After listening to all the input, I know what we should do and the little compromises just water it down. We might as well junk the whole project because, in this state, it will not do what the customer wants it to do."

"Whose meeting was that that you just walked out of?" I asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, was it the team's meeting, or was it your meeting? Let me put it a different way. Who is your boss going to hold accountable for this decision?"

"Oh, I tried that once, blaming a decision on the team. I got the message. My boss is going to hold me accountable for the decision."

"Then, it wasn't a team meeting. It was YOUR meeting that the team got invited to. It is your responsibility to listen to the input, and it is also your responsibility, as a manager, to make the decision. And you don't need agreement, you just need support."

Adelle had to sit down to think about this one.

John Goodpasture has a post on estimates from Fred Brooks. Fred's quote, which I'll repeat for effect, from John's site is It is very difficult to make a vigorous, plausible, and job-risking defense of an estimate that is derived by... Glen B. Alleman

I spoke again this year Carnegie Mellon University on the topic of project management in the software development world. Not matter what method you use to develop the software needed by the project, for success these principles must be in... Glen B. Alleman

The history of our future is filled with... moon bases jet packs 200 mph cars but has no... cell phones, Internet, and no laptop computers Over the long haul, dramatic things happen to change the equation. Sunil Paul, quoted in... Glen B. Alleman

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. - H. L. Mencken I'm attending a National Defense Industry Association conference on Program Management. I took a break to read some emails - you can... Glen B. Alleman

There is one of those semi-heated discussions on an agile forum around CMMI, Agile and the confusion between them. Here's a summary from CMMI DEV V1.2. Note that the software development activities live in Engineering. An Update I'm presenting to... Glen B. Alleman

"Things are managed; people are led" - Capt. Grace Hopper Thanks to John Goodpasture for the reminder. I once had the privilege of "trying" to carry Captin Hopper's bag at the Orange County airport for an ACM meeting she was... Glen B. Alleman

While responding to a post on Herding Cats, I came across a $75 Outlook based PM tool MissingLink Project Management So minus the software interpreted process of Andrew's tool, what's the difference here? Outlook is ubiquitous, possibly on every desktop... Glen B. Alleman

We get brilliant results from average people managing brilliant systems. Our competitors get average results from brilliant people working around broken systems – Fujio Cho, Chairman Toyota Motors People are needed. But the "system" is the critical success factor. Tools... Glen B. Alleman

A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner - English Proverb Experience comes from "doing." Doing in difficult situations, with difficult projects builds experience that can be applied to the next project which has difficult situations. Glen B. Alleman

Dan Ward - a favorite Blogger and Author in Defense AT&L - has a nice little post about the principles of the US Navy Seals. Humans are more important than hardware Quality is better than quantity Special Operations Forces cannot... Glen B. Alleman

Akio Toyoda is on the hot seat. Reportedly, he is a forward-thinking guy who is intent on bringing the legacy of the family to the design of the future of the company. Unfortunately, CEO Toyoda is being tested beyond that of any of his recent predessors. Toyota is in trouble…in the market for cars…in the financial markets…and as as model for managing companies.

Last week I was speaking with Norman Bodek, Godfather of Lean, about Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo for my up-coming book. Norman knew both of them. He was their English-language publisher and he introduced 100s of people to them on his more than 75 study missions to Japan. I had just finished my weekly staff video conference where our consultants lamented that Toyota must have lost their way. I asked Norman what he thought.

Confront this reality: Electronic hardware and software is not bug free.The conventional wisdom about Toyota's quality issues is that they got distracted while pursuing a goal to be the world's largest car company. Norman didn't think they were ever pursuing that as a goal. At one time Toyota's CEO Watanabe predicted that it would happen, but it was never the goal. Yet, we can't ignore their rapid expansion into many new markets across the world. Norman speculated that too many of Toyota's managers of today weren't influenced by Engineer Ohno and Dr. Shingo.

Another contributing factor is the complication in today's vehicles. I read an article in the last week that said there are upwards of 100 computer chips controlling everything from emissions and speed to real-time fuel economy and handsfree cellphone capability. All that hardware requires software. Programmers will tell you that no software is bug free. Ever see the Windows blue screen of death?

One of my good friends wrote a short note to me this morning asking,

"WTF is up with Toyota? How did this happen? I thought they set the standard for quality control?"

Great questions. My answer:

"It's not as bad as Secretary Ray Lahood and the media have made it.
"It's worse than anything that has happened before at Toyota.
"Toyota's solution to the sticking accelerator is elegant.
"It took Toyota way too long to put the pieces together to get there."

It's the same question my colleagues have been asking me. I haven't known how to answer any of them until this morning. Today, something clicked.

(...)
Read the rest of What Is Going on with Toyota (422 words)

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Post tags: Akio Toyoda, Norman Bodek, Shigeo Shingo, Taiichi Ohno, Toyota

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OK, so the word "beauty" is not often paired with the words "your employees" unless you are having a difficult harassment-related conversation with your HR manager.... but that is not the type of beauty I am talking about. And before... Lisa Haneberg

Erik Gfesser posted a lovely review of Manage Your Project Portfolio. Thanks, Erik!

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Three years ago, Drew McLellan approached me about writing a project management post a couple of times a month.  About a year after it started, the Iowabiz blog moved under the ownership of The Business Record, and Todd Razor.

Last week, the Iowa Newspaper Association named Iowabiz the best newspaper blog in the state of Iowa.  I've been honored that I get to play in their sandbox.

Congratulations to Iowabiz, Todd, and my fellow contributors on creating and maintaining an awesome community to improve the state of business in Iowa.

Carpe Factum!

From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
Can you expand on the "Time Span" "compensation banding" approach? I am not familiar with this concept and do not fully understand what is meant by either term.

Response:
Time Span is a recurring theme in this blog and in our leadership program (Working Leadership Online). Time Span is the cornerstone of the management research conducted by Elliott Jaques from the early 1950's until his death in 2003. This research is documented in 26 books written during his lifetime and remains the most coherent and potent foundation for organizational design on the planet.

If you can see a goal, as a "what, by when," then you can understand Time Span. Time Span is the time element in any goal statement. All behavior is goal-directed behavior, so Time Span touches everything we do. Most importantly, for managers, Time Span helps us understand the complexity of any goal. The longer the Time Span of the goal, the higher its complexity. The shorter the Time Span of the goal, less complexity.

We can also understand the complexity of any role in the organization by examination of their longest Time Span tasks (goals). The Time Span of the longest tasks in a role are a direct indicator of the complexity of the role. By calibrating the Time Span of the tasks in the roles inside your organization, you will be able to accurately identify and rank those roles according to complexity.

Pay banding looks at the those Time Spans and recognizes fair compensation. The longer the Time Span of the tasks (goals) in a role, the higher the compensation. Pay banding is a straightforward correlation of fair compensation for increasingly longer Time Span roles. Once you have determined fair compensation based on Time Span, discussions related to the value of roles can be put to rest and we can get back to work.

An in-depth explanation, along with defined pay bands can be found in Social Power and the CEO, on pages 55-56. If you have more questions, Ask Tom.

John Goodpasture has a post on estimates from Fred Brooks. Fred's quote, which I'll repeat for effect, from John's site is

It is very difficult to make a vigorous, plausible, and job-risking defense of an estimate that is derived by no quantitative method, supported by little data, and certified chiefly by the hunches of the managers.

In many domains, estimating is performed in ways similar to Fred's description. Here's some phrases found in RFP's from the Defense Department:

• The estimate must be easily traceable from the lowest level at which the Offeror’s estimate was substantiated to the CLIN.
• When using historical data, the Offeror should describe why the system is comparable to the proposed program. This includes a functional and technical comparison explaining the differences as well as similarities between the historical and the proposed system. Also include an explanation of the relationship between the analogous element cost and the total program cost.
• Adjustments to derive the proposal estimate relate to reasons and justification for any adjustments made to programmatic, technical and actual cost data for the historical system. The Offeror should provide the basis and document any adjustments applied to the historical data (e.g., complexity factors and normalization methods) that reflect the characteristics of the proposed system. This includes an audit trail sufficient for the Government to reconstruct the proposed estimate and judge its credibility.

Now these are heavy duty words, probably not applicable outside the procurement of similarly heavy duty weapons systems.

But as John points out through Brooks' quote, to do otherwise is complete nonsense on anything but a trivial project.

So wjy does this continue to be the practice in many areas? Some would say, it's because IT projects are software projects and you really can't estimate software projects. To this I say frankly - BS. The program we work int he defense are predominately software development projects. Software development with emerging requirements, changing requirements, state of the art technology, all the things IT project managers encounter.

My personal opinion is

Project estimating, and project management is hard work. Software development is fun work. Still hard but fun. Project Management is hard work, with almost no fun.

So why work on something hard if it's not fun? Secondly, there is no real downside for missing estimates in the commercial IT world. Oh sure, there is hell to pay, people get fired, the project gets canceled. But the company rarely goes out of business, people never die, launch dates are rarely missed. I'm not talking about silly commercial product launch dates, I'm talking about launch dates to Mars, launch dates for NRO (National Reconnaissance Office) launch dates. Those kind of launch dates.

What's missing is the discipline - at appropriate levels of course - to "do the right thing." That's the root cause of most problems in the commercial world - pure missing discipline.

It's the Micky Rooney school of management. Where Micky and Judy Garland are in the alley behind a NYC theater, when they say to each other and their friends...

Hey guy, I have an idea, let's put on a show

It's that, let's get started and see where this goes, kind of approach to project management. Where it goes many times is straight into the ditch.

OK, so the word "beauty" is not often paired with the words "your employees" unless you are having a difficult harassment-related conversation with your HR manager.... but that is not the type of beauty I am talking about.

And before I get into the main point of this post, let me throw out a few other words: love, fan, admiration, extraordinary.

I was training in Wash DC this week (got out just in time to avoid getting stuck!) and I noticed that whenever I talked about believing in employees, my training participants looked and acted differently.

(beauty in our back yard in Cincinnati)

We want to believe that our employees have the capacity to do amazing work. We want to see the beauty that lies within them - beauty that defines their desire to make a difference and to do great work. We want to feel a connection with our peers and employees that is deep (get your mind out of the gutter) and special.

But many managers don't seem to believe, don't seem to see, don't seem to feel, don't seem to connect. What has happened?

• Stress?
• Being too busy?
• Extrinsic rewards and reinforcement systems that has sucked the life out of us all?
• Lack of confidence?

Yes. All that. And yet, I am moved by the possibility that we can again believe, see, feel, and connect. Every time I talk to groups about this, I see their eyes shine and their hopes come alive again. Talking about it can reawaken what's inside and provide a beneficial nudge toward a better way of managing.

The Training Salon:

At the upcoming ASTD International conference in Chicago, I will be talking about using the Salon concept for training (I will also be talking about training middle managers in a second talk at the conference):

• According to wikipedia, "A salon is a gathering of intellectual, social, political, and cultural elites under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host, partly to amuse one another and partly to refine their taste and increase their knowledge through conversation."
  

Salons are great vehicles for learning and perfect for developing managers and leaders. Salon-type conversations offer a deepness that can transform how we look at our work and each other and I think can be a great way enliven the best that is within each of us - our beauty.

The training I did last week was not a salon - per se - but the conversation had some qualities of a great salon experience.

When I was getting my MFA from Goddard College, we had 10-day residencies twice each year. My pals in the program and I started the practice of holding evening salons and it was wonderful. Anyone could come and anyone could participate, read, perform, share, provoke. Since then, I have enjoyed business-oriented salon type gatherings. 

Last week, I shared my travel schedule on this blog. Check it out again. I would love to get a few salon conversations going. Let me know if you want to participate. And give the training salon a try at your workplace (or start with several professional pals).

We need to do whatever it takes to catalyze the more compelling aspects of management and leadership - the aspects that demonstrate that being a manager is a privilege and an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of those who work for and with us.

I got my new laptop this week... which meant a quick trip to Ed Snuffin at Iowa Computer Repair to do all the set-up and security work before I start to use it.  Now I can rest assured that my "sidekick" is optimized and will run smoothly for years.

I had a few clothes that needed mending, so a trip to Frederick's Tailors in Clive.  They always make all of my clothes look like new when they're done.

Next was a trip to the dry cleaners, Executive Cleaners in Urbandale, who get my clothes looking excellent every time.  Never a quality issue, unlike many other cleaners in town.

Hungry for Italian, I always make an effort to stop at A Taste of Italy on University Avenue.  The guys behind the counter frequently introduce me to new meats and cheeses (much to the chagrin of my wife).

But for the taste of the day, it was a chance to catch up with a friend over the best onion rings in Des Moines at Maxie's Restaurant.

And when it came time to pick up my prescription, John Forbes' Medicap on Douglas Avenue is a no-brainer for me.

Why am I telling you all of this?  Is it just a shameless plug for some of my favorite service providers?

Well, yes and no.

Our accomplishments are a living testament.  The outputs we as service providers produce are the inputs for somebody else (customers).  Ang guess what?  They are the feedback loop for our outputs.  If we produce great outputs, they will tell lots of people how great we are.  If we produce poor outputs, they will tell even more people how bad we are.

For me, I always try to provide my clients, my students, and my audiences with the best value possible.  I want them to come away saying "Wow - I got more than I bargained for!"  My accomplishments, my outputs exist to make their inputs (and therefore, their accomplishments) better.

So what are your outputs?  Who is using them as inputs?  Are they excited enough to tell everybody?

Now it's time to assemble my financial records to pass off to the world's best accountant, Lambert Blank.

(Disclaimer:  None of these service providers knew I was writing about them, and I received no compensation for my telling you about them.)

I spoke again this year Carnegie Mellon University on the topic of project management in the software development world.

Not matter what method you use to develop the software needed by the project, for success these principles must be in place

Immutable Principles Of Project Management (V7 Final Cmu)View more documents from Glen Alleman.