Clarke Ching has posted a chapter of his ever-in-beta book on Agile / TOC in software developmetnt. His comments ring true and remind me of things that Dave Snowden talks about frequently.
All in project management
Clarke Ching has posted a chapter of his ever-in-beta book on Agile / TOC in software developmetnt. His comments ring true and remind me of things that Dave Snowden talks about frequently.
Rob Newbold of ProChain held a session, diving into one of the big themes of his book, The Project Manifesto. It was good listening to him talk about it, as I picked up some things I hadn't appreciated from reading the book alone.
Interesting video from Mary Poppendieck on The Tyranny of "The Plan". It's full of good anecdotes and a couple of great examples of how planning could really work, instead of they way it usually (doesn't) work today.
Rob Newbold's latest book takes the reader further down into how to run projects (with CCPM). This book will be something to talk about with my colleagues and friends who are running these kinds of projects.
When planning a project, are you more interested in the dates every activity happens, or are you more interested in how all the activities are connected together?
After the TOC ICO conference, I picked up Yuji Kishira's Wa - Transformation Management by Harmony, based on a conversation with him and other attendees. It is a fun take on Theory of Constraints, change management and other topics.
Is Agile at all compatible with project management? Should we even try to make them talk to each other? Wolfram Müller talked through his views on Agile, and on how some of the TOC applications could be thought of as working together with the Agile mechanisms.
Avraham Mordoch presented his thoughts on an organizational maturity model for project management environments, and specifically related to Critical Chain Project Management. It was very interesting to listen to in relation to my recent experiences with project management work.
How about this for advocating Theory of Constraints? The opening keynote from Mazda at the TOC ICO conference ended with the statement, "Made with TOC." They even had a couple cars in the parking lot to show off.
Ihab Sarieddine has a nice overview of CCPM in his blog on project management, "Improving Scheduling Using Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM)."
I've had the Stop Starting, Start Finishing brochure / comic from Arne Rock and his team sitting in my briefcase ever since the Lean Kanban conference last spring. It's a fun read about how Justin (Time) does a Kanban implementation.
Working with clients on project management, as I do, I see a familiar theme come up over and over again. People have a difficult time separating the creation of an idea from starting to work on that idea.
Project management and knowledge management are about getting things done. I attended and spoke at the Center for Business Information (CBI) 6th Annual Forum on Knowledge Management this week in Philadelphia. Rather than talk about knowledge management directly, I opted to speak about managing projects - whether they are KM or other types.
Tuesday LSSC opened with a fun, story-filled keynote from Gregory Howell of the Lean Construction Institute. I think most of the audience could have listened to him for another hour. I loved his quote, "Real collaboration happens when we agree to move money across borders."
I breezed through Jim Benson's short and informative Why Plans Fail: Cognitive Bias, Decision Making, and Your Business. As you can see from the subtitle, it isn't about blaming someone else for why plans fail. It's about helping us see how our own thinking gets us in this mess.
A local paper has a great quote that is takes four times longer to complete two tasks effectively than to do each one individually.
Great find by Michael Krigsman on project management lessons in an academic paper. Nice reminder that idleness is only a problem when it is attached to value in the organization: idle projects / products.
Don't use milestones to manage your projects. Use buffers at key integration points and a project buffer at the end. This is a much more reasonable way to manage your project and the natural variability of execution.