My Interview On The PM Podcast

Cornelius Fichtner over at The PM Podcast surprised me a while back by inviting me to be an interview guest on his show. I was obviously flattered as he puts out the grand daddy of project management podcasts, and I've been listening to the show for many moons. In my opinion Cornelius' The PM Podcast and Dina Scott's Controlling Chaos are in a league of their own.

The interview focuses mostly on my background and the differences between the academic and working worlds of project management education. I also mentioned one of my favorite project management books, "Project Management in the Fast Lane" by Robert Newbold. It is one of my favorite because it does a great job at teaching the mechanics and "how to" of doing Critical Chain Project Management.

Take a listen, and if you haven't already discovered The PM Podcast, I highly recommend going back to listen to past shows. Cornelius does an interview format for most of his shows, and has a lot of great guests. Don't worry, most of them have much more project management experience than I do!

The PM Podcast Episode 065: BS and MBA in Project Management


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Communication Failure and PM HR

I had a great HR Project Management class tonight. We had a guest speaker from a local organization come in and tell us a little about what she does as a new project manager and some of the challenges she deals with on a daily basis. She reinforced what I've experienced and been told a thousand times: Project Management is 90% communication!

As a timely matter of fate, one of my favorite subscriptions was updated today with a post titled "Silence — One of the Two Great Wastes™ — Is a Project and Career Killer" over at Reforming Project Management. It ties very well with what we spoke about tonight and some of the overall themes of this course I am taking now.

The article cites a few sources that conclude:

"...that project deterioration was a function of not listening and not speaking. We named those behaviors the Two Great Wastes."

I love the term quoted in the post, "organizational silence" to describe when communication just doesn't happen. I addition to the points made in these sources, I'd like to add some of the items we brainstormed about thus far this term regarding reasons why communication fails and therefore creating a high probability that the project will also fail.

"This is my show, punk!"
That person who just waits for someone to voice a concern or idea so they can shoot them down. The Theory X manager "who's always right." Gee, I really feel like putting myself out there and contributing in this environment.

"Silence is golden."
The project manager who assumes that because no one says anything, they are all in agreement and understand. In truth, they are (a) confused but too embarrassed to admit they don't understand, (b) afraid to speak up for some reason, (c) don't care enough to put forth the effort, or (d) inhibited by one of a thousand other reasons. Correction; "Silence is failure."

"Look at me! Look at me!"
These are the people who do a little too much contributing. They monopolize the conversation, use ambiguous language, and do not listen to what other people have to say. They view the world from all 3 viewpoints: me, myself, and I. They might not even have a good understanding of what they are talking about. Get out your bullsh%t bingo cards.

"What was your name again?"
From what I've seen of small to large projects, there's simply no reason to not have a status update meeting at least bi-weekly with your project team. Whether or not you've got a major milestone to report on, regular meetings keep the communication channels open and keep the project progress transparent. You can review the major project risks, review upcoming tasks, and publicly applaud team members who have done something exceptional recently.
Change is happening all the time on your project, so use regular meetings as a way to acknowledge and deal with it. An experienced project manager once gave me some advice, "The only things guaranteed in life are death, taxes, and that once you baseline your project plan, someone or something will come along and screw with it."

Of course there are tons of other reasons why communications fail on projects. What are some of your favorites? Let me know.

Management Dilemmas - Part Two

I've made a very little amount of headway on the book I'm reading now, Management Dilemmas: The Theory of Constraints Approach to Problem Identification and Solutions. Time has been tight with work, school, and family but I'm trudging through slowly.


The case studies continued in the chapters I've read since the first post about this book. One concerns a situation with a purchasing manager who is trying to deal with a complete product change that has an uncertain implementation date. There are constraints around how much can/should be ordered, and the premiums required for smaller batches. The problem here is to not fall short of materials for production of the old product, and at the same time not have a huge amount of waste after the change, because all the existing materials will be obsolete when the change occurs. Upper management is incenting conflicting actions, and traditionally the purchasing manager has to try and 'balance' them. I like the TOC approach.

Another chapter goes into a scenario where a company founder split his company into profit centers in order to incent his managers to perform. The case study analyzes the situation and some of the resulting problems that have come to light over a period of two years. The plants have fixed transfer costs built into their outputs when they are provided to the other plants, and again this is a question of whether or not the right things are being incented, in the right way. The TOC solution presented resolves the conflict and acheives the founder's original vision.

I will do another post on this book when I've completed it. Cheers!

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Management Dilemmas - Part One

I'm about half way through the book I'm reading now, Management Dilemmas: The Theory of Constraints Approach to Problem Identification and Solutions. It was difficult to get into it at first, perhaps because the author made an appropriate introductory section going into the conceptual aspects of the TOC thinking processes, the Throughput world versus the Cost world, etc. which I've already read extensively about. Overall, good content in the beginning but a little slow and university textbook-like reading.

Then it gets good.

The author continues with several case studies to highlight various management problems in different industries, and very different causes and circumstances. In the first section a case study is used too, but plays a minor role in the content. These later chapters dive into the scenarios presented and I'm finding myself quite engaged with them. It's as if you are playing the part of a consultant, and need to correctly diagnose the core problems that are causing the evident symptoms. It's like detective work and I'm working through my own TOC diagrams to practice after I read the case, and see if I come up with the answer the author does. My diagnoses have been similar thus far.

The case studies so far have included problems in a hotel, office supply company, a high-end desk lamp manufacturer, the Army's Central Communications Laboratory, and a hospital. It's been great for showing examples of using TOC to solve problems in this eclectic mix of situations, and giving me practice at the TOC concepts. I hope as I internalize more about TOC, CCPM, and EVM I will be better suited to figure out the CCEVM solution.

I will do another post on this book when I've completed it. Cheers!

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PMI Member Forum Response- Critical Chain

I responded to a question on the PMI member forums that I wanted to share:

Subject: Critical Chain Project Management

Does anyone have experience with this PM approach/toolset. I have run across some people proclaiming it as the savior of project management (unfortunately, the biggest proponent I met seemed to think that a Project Plan is all there is to Project Management and expressed enough negativity regarding PMI and the PMP designation that I found it hard to give credence to the validity of his information).

I am interested in any validation of its effectiveness beyond anecdotal evidence.

RE: Critical Chain Project Management
Posted by Joshua Nankivel on 01/18/2007

I personally have not had the opportunity to implement critical chain on anything except very small projects. I can give you some good resources however, citing individuals and organizations that have had success with critical chain project management.

1. The PM Podcast Episode #57. - I don't recall specific examples Alan cited on the show, but I might be wrong. You may be able to contact Alan Elder at the email address listed on Cornelius' site directly for some direction.
2. The Critical Chain Yahoo Group - has a lot of active contributors who utilize critical chain on a daily basis
3. This whitepaper from Boeing can be downloaded upon request, I requested and read it and it's a really great overview of how critical chain was used in a real project. Very well written.
4. More case studies
5. Yet another case study

I would add that I have run into some people/articles that seem to be overly confident in critical chain. I think it has great potential, but it's only a piece of the puzzle. I look forward to using it myself on larger projects in the future.

Also, one of the things I post fairly frequently about on my blog is critical chain project management. If you're interested in critical chain even the broader scope of project management in general, I'd (of course) suggest it!

Cheers!

Josh Nankivel

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Critical Chain Resource Management

I corresponded with Vladimir Liberzon after seeing a post he made on the Critical Chain Yahoo Group with a link to a presentation on "Resource Limited Project Management." The presentation deals with managing resource constraints from a Critical Chain perspective and is a good resource for people interested in CCPM. Vladimir's company, Spider Management Technologies (I used a translator plug-in for Firefox so I could read the site links), also has a software package offering called Spider Project which deals with Critical Chain planning and other aspects. They have a demo version you can download to check it out. I haven't yet, but plan to soon. My school-issued laptop is locked down so I can't install anything that isn't pre-approved by the administration, so I'll have to try it out on my home PC when there's some magical time I can conjure up where I'm not at either school or work all day.

Check out Vladimir's presentation here.

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What your project team isn't telling you

Today I went to my first local PMI chapter function. There wasn't too much time for mingling and meeting people since it was over the lunch hour, although I did meet some nice people I hope to interact with more. Timothy Johnson from Carpe Factum was the guest speaker, and his presentation was titled "What your project team isn't telling you."

Tim is a great speaker, he had us laughing and very engaged. He spoke a lot about the political aspects in project teams and the organizations and stakeholders involved. He gave a lot of great tips and described the majority of project environments fairly accurately. He also talked a little about his book, "Race Through the Forest". It's a project management fable. There are so many business fables out there, now project managers have one too!

I spoke with Tim briefly after his presentation and he told me a little about his blog, CarpeFactum.com. I've been able to read a few of his posts, and it appears he talks much about organizational behavior and politics, and of course the pursuit of accomplishment. I already saw him quote Stephen Covey in a post, so that wins some points in my book too. I subscribed to his RSS feed so I can keep up with his blog.

Tim said he would make the presentation he used today available to the Sioux Empire PMI Chapter on their website, so when they post that I'll definitely get a post and link on this blog to it. There's some great content in there.

So what does Carpe Factum mean? It's Latin for "Seize the Accomplishment". Or, as Tim humorously put it today, "It's Latin for, 'get 'er done!'"

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CCEVM Evaporating Cloud Diagram

A Goldratt technique came in handy to map out where I see the conflict between CCPM and EVM that I referred to in my last post. Please excuse it's sloppiness, I will try to make a cleaner computer-generated version later on, but I think I may be refining this later on anyway.

I've never seen an evaporating cloud with more than 1 requirement for each of the prerequisites, but I found it necessary to have a requirement which stems from both CCPM and EVM. The conflict indicated between employing Critical Chain and EVM stems from different behaviors being driven by the two. Critical Chain supports behaviors that focus on efficiency with tasks on the Critical Chain , thus improving the outcome of the project. EVM supports behaviors that make it appear overall cost efficiencies are good, even if those efficiencies are being achieved on tasks that aren't critical to the completion time of the project. Project managers might decide to work on some easier non-critical tasks if their EVM is going to fall short and get a short-term EVM win, but if that happens it throws EVM's predictive power regarding schedule out the window.



















The resulting direction from this is to modify the budgeting and cost control tools in the Critical Chain body of knowledge. It needs to use buffer management methods for cost, to control the project that is implemented in such a way to make it compatible with existing EVM metrics. There would be a single project cost buffer which is already part of the CCBOK. Cost buffer management would be used for controlling project costs, in addition to an accurate EVM translation based on cost buffer utilization compared to planned utilization.

Note: from a cost perspective, all tasks are on the Cost Critical Chain (CCC) because cost over run in any task will make the project over budget unless other tasks have under runs. It makes no difference if they are on the schedule's critical chain. That's why there's only 1 cost buffer, the project cost buffer.

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Thanks!

It's amazing how many wonderful people there are out there. I've reached out to several people who have all been so willing to mentor and help out a newbie like me. I'd like to give a shout out and thanks to the following, and keep the list updated so I always remember the great people that shouldn't be taken for granted.


Tamara, Mazaryk, and Draven - My Family
-for putting up with all of my activities (work, school, reading, blogging) that take time away from them. I couldn't do any of this without their support.

Brian Bernhard, P.E. - Professor
-for being my favorite project management professor and turning me on to Critical Chain project management; for sharing his wisdom, enthusiasm, encouragement and teaching in a way that encourages independent thought and innovation

Cornelius Fichtner, PMP - The PM Podcast, The PM Prepcast
-for giving many helpful suggestions and mentoring me regarding project management and blogging, and producing one of my two favorite podcasts

Dina Henry Scott, PMP - Controlling Chaos
-for being ever helpful with encouragement and info, and producing one of my two favorite podcasts

Jack Vinson, Ph.D. - Knowledge Jolt, Inc., Knowledge Jolt with Jack
-for fielding my Critical Chain questions and directing me to answers, and helping me with getting the word out about my blog

Larry Leach, PMP - Advanced Projects Inc.
-for his contributions to the Critical Chain Yahoo group, and giving me permission to post his NASA presentation on CCPM and EVM

Michael R. Wood - The Helix Factor
-for introducing me to "The Helix Factor" and his other books, and his valuable contributions to the Gantthead.com community

Critical Chain Earned Value Management (CCEVM)

I had a discussion tonight with my great friend Chad that got my brain spinning again about Critical Chain and EVM. My notes are not available right now for me to reference, but I wanted to throw out some of the major concepts and challenges I've run into thus far.

First, the question is why bother? Well, I really believe in Critical Chain and TOC concepts, but I think there's too much entrenched thinking out there for it to be adopted by any organizations other than those who are very innovative and have a culture that embraces positive change. For instance, I've heard that most government contracts require EVM reporting, and many private organizations also require it. That kills a lot of possible change to CCPM right there.

I believe that most CCPM enthusiasts are trying to introduce it as necessitating the discard of existing paradigms completely and immediately. (EVM for example) Such a dramatic shift is next to impossible for any organization with a critical mass of bureaucracy, and subsequent lack of innovative capacity. I suggest that a more gradual shift for these entities is the appropriate course of action. I'm not saying it can't be done the other way, I know of several examples where it seems to me the entity was very bureaucratic, but since I don't have personal experience with those companies/agencies I can only speculate.

My goal is to figure out a way to use CCPM to run a project while still using EVM metrics in a useful way, without having to go back and re-baseline the schedule using a traditional critical path approach. Some software packages do exactly this, but I would argue the results of this EVM analysis are not linked to the way the project is managed. The pitfall here is that if traditional EVM is the reporting framework the project is measured on, it will become the driver of how the project is managed. My problem with that is that a project team can work on non-critical tasks when they really should be focusing on critical chain tasks instead, just so they can meet their EVM numbers and pretend they are on schedule. This directly conflicts with the whole concept of CCPM.

So, some rough requirements off the top of my head:
1. Use CCPM methods to schedule and manage the project
2. Modify CCPM methods to incorporate cost buffer management.
3. Use CCPM cost and schedule buffer utilization to formulate meaningful metrics for schedule and cost performance that are EVM in language and intent, and tied directly to Critical Path performance.
4. Ensure CCEVM reporting is useful not only for external project stakeholders, but also adds clear value for the project manager and team. It's crucial that CCEVM makes sense for all parties.
5. CCEVM must be formulated in such a way that organizations who require EVM on projects are able to accept CCEVM metrics after a reasonable evaluation effort.

Some of the paths I can already see:
1. I've created some formulas to calculate feeder and project buffer sizes for schedule and cost based on some specific new information that will be required from the risk management phase.
2. I can see how adding some more statistical information to the CCEVM metrics will help make the data more useful, showing how the aggregate uncertainty decreases as a project progresses.
3. Modification of the traditional CCPM fever chart analysis to incorporate the aggregate uncertainty for various stages throughout a project.

Last but not least, I need to figure out a way to do all this without creating analysis paralysis and having to hire someone extra just to sort all this out!!!

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Focused Performance

Frank over at Focused Performance has a great site here on Critical Chain & Project Management. It contains, among other things, an example of the Goldratt "evaporating cloud" diagram for the objective of managing projects successfully. It highlights the conflict between having or not having safety time in task duration estimates within projects. The evaporating cloud method is used to identify assumptions and either find invalid ones or come up with a new approach that satisfies the requirements without being in conflict with other prerequisites. In this case, the CC solution would be to replace the bottom prerequisite with something like "use buffers to manage uncertainty."

I strongly suggest you check out Frank's site if you want to learn more about TOC and Critical Chain.

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Knowledge Jolt with Jack

Jack Vinson over at Knowledge Jolt with Jack did a post about my post on multitasking yesterday. It's good to know someone agrees with me and I'm not completely off my rocker!

I remember an interview I had once where I was asked about multitasking, and the interviewer was floored when I said I avoid multitasking whenever possible. I think the normal response is something like "I can juggle whatever you throw at me!" I got the job, so I suppose I was able to explain my rationale well enough.

To me, multitasking is defined incorrectly by most people. Eliminating multitasking during your workday will make you more productive and able to churn through projects with better quality, thus increasing the number of tasks you can handle in a week, month, quarter, and year! It's all about increasing overall throughput.

Make sure you check out Jack's blog on a regular basis, he's got a lot of great things to say!

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The Five Diseases of Project Management

No Limits Leadership, Inc. has this white paper authored by Allan Elder titled "The Five Diseases of Project Management". Allan was interviewed on Episode 57 of the Project Management Podcast a short time ago. This is an overview of some of the problems addressed by Critical Chain project management.

He identifies 5 reasons why projects struggle, and a tiny peek at how CCPM addresses them:

• Bad multi-tasking
• Student syndrome
• Parkinson's law
• Task dependency
• PM math where 2+2=5

Check out the white paper here.

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EVM and Critical Chain Presentation courtesy of Larry Leach

I contacted Larry Leach of www.advanced-projects.com to ask his permission to post a great presentation he did at a NASA project management conference in 2005. He graciously gave his blessing. If you don't know Larry's work, he wrote a book with great reviews called Critical Chain Project Management. I haven't read it yet but hope to soon.


The presentation is regarding how EVM and Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) can be complimentary, and gives pros/cons of both, etc.

Check it out here.

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Multi - tasking, Covey and TOC

Multi-tasking is a subject I'm passionate about. Passionate about NOT doing actually, whenever possible. Let me start by identifying two types of multi-tasking, bad and required.

Bad multi-tasking is working on two things simultaneously, or switching between things because something else is suddenly urgent, but not important enough to justify dropping everything you are working on. Many of us never stop to think about it though, we automatically equate urgency to priority. Just because something seems urgent doesn't mean you should drop everything. Remember Mr. Covey's 4 quadrants:

        Urgent   Not Urgent

Important       Q1       Q2

Not Important   Q3       Q4

If you switch from a task you are working on in Q1 or Q2 for the sole purpose of working on something in Q3 or Q4, you've participated in bad multitasking. The same goes if you switch from Q1 to Q2.

Things become urgent when you've got someone on the phone, etc. Many times you can write that task down to work on it later, and continue working on your important task.

I try not to multi-task whenever possible. Some exceptions include when I'm just burned out on something and need to switch in order to get my brain engaged, or when something urgent and important comes to light. I call this required multi-tasking. Even then, I do what I can to work on a task from start to finish.

Some techniques I use daily:

1. I only check my email 2 or 3 times a day max. If it's urgent, they'll call me. I also went into the options on my email client (Outlook) and disabled the notification options. I don't want to know when a new email comes in, it's too tempting a distraction.
2. Post-It notes are evil. Put it in your task list, contacts, or calendar immediately. You don't need the yellow freak staring at you all day saying, "don't pay attention to what you're working on, think about me instead!"
   
3. I schedule everything I know about ahead of time. Time to respond to email is specifically scheduled in my calendar.
4. Every task of any significance goes into my calendar. Hard at first, easy now that it's a habit. This allows me to table things that aren't in Q1 with a concrete plan to get them done. It's like a mini project for every task, takes about 15 seconds to schedule and then I can get back to my current focus without losing my train of thought.
   
5. When someone comes over to my desk or calls me asking for something, if it's not a Q1 task I schedule it instead of dropping everything to work on it right then.
   

TOC and Critical Chain are focused on eliminating multitasking for the bottlenecks. In your personal time management, you are the bottleneck! There's only one of you. See the figures below for some explanations of how decreasing multi-tasking can help shorten your lead times to get things done, and save overall time in the process.

For me personally, there's another huge benefit. When I got serious about not multi-tasking, my stress level at work dropped dramatically. The act of trying to juggle things at the same time and/or switching from this to that was killing my creativity and brainpower, and left me completely zapped at the end of the day. No more. I actually like my job now.

See this great article for some more interesting points on multi-tasking.







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Post on StartupNation.com

I recently made this post on startupnation.com about project management and entreprenuership. Check it out here!

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TOC and Critical Chain - Book recommendations

These are all good TOC and Critical Chain books I've personally read to date (that I think are good.) I recommend reading them in the listed order. The ones I list as concept books are important to read first so the more technical books make sense.

Theory of Constraints (TOC)

• The Goal - THE TOC concept overview, novel form
• Necessary But Not Sufficient - TOC and ERP concepts, novel form
• Theory of Constraints - Technical aspects of TOC, further concept depth

Critical Chain Project Management

• Critical Chain - THE Critical Chain concept overview, novel form
• Project Management in the Fast Lane - Technical aspects of Critical Chain
• Projects in Less Time - The Basics of Critical Chain
• Critical Chain Project Management - Generally touted as one of the best CCPM books
  

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What is TOC?

I'm a Theory of Constraints (TOC) enthusiast. So what exactly is TOC? Here's a short, short summary.

In short, it's a method of identifying and strengthening the weakest link (constraint) in any process, in an iterative approach to ongoing improvement. There are also tools that go along with it to help identify assumptions and constraints, etc. TOC was developed by Eli Goldratt. The Avraham Y. Goldratt Institute is the organization that maintains the TOC body of knowledge.

Part of TOC are the 5 focusing steps, which speak to using TOC for continuous improvement:

1. Identify the constraint
Figure out where the bottleneck is, from a total system perspective, not a local part of the system.

2. Exploit the constraint
Get the most you can out of the bottleneck, it will directly increase the throughput of the whole system

3. Subordinate everything to the above decision
Change habits and policies if need be to make sure you are getting the most out of the constraint. No more "this is the way we've always done it." Also, don't put more work into the system than what the constraint can handle, it just builds up work in progress (WIP) in front of the constraint. This means running a machine in a manufacturing process (for example) so you're getting 100% utilization is the wrong thing to do if it's just building up WIP in front of the constraint. Change your thinking....we want global optimization, not local optimization. Nothing is sacred except the goal of global improvement.

4. Elevate the constraint
If you need more throughput from the constraint still, consider adding to it's capacity by offloading some work, adding extra resources, etc. Speed up the bottleneck!

5. Go back to step 1 once the constraint is broken
"Breaking a constraint" means that you've improved the bottleneck to the point that now, the bottleneck has moved to somewhere else in the system. Now, don't let the new processes and policies become roadblocks to future improvement! Go back to step 1 and start over!

Here's a TOC concept cartoon from TOCCA

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Critical Chain EVM?

A while back I sent in a question to The Project Management Podcast and Controlling Chaos regarding how Critical Chain scheduling and Earned Value Management had ever been used together. Cornelius brought on Allan Elder in Episode 57 of the PM Podcast and addressed the question, however the answer was as I suspected, and I wasn't happy with it. Basically using them together is really just keeping a different set of books, one to manage the project (CC buffer management) and one to report the project to external stakeholders who want to see EVM metrics.

I've started throwing some ideas down on paper regarding how the methodology I like (Critical Chain) can be used in a more streamlined way with earned value. I've got a lot of research left to do on both in order to get something somewhat coherent, but I think I've got the basic concept down and I've even got some formulas already. It's basically a way to use the Critical Chain buffer utilization to directly yield EVM metrics without having to go back and re-baseline the schedule in the traditional Critical Path format. From what I understand the software packages that do this conversion go about it that way. I really don't know if those outputs are useful or not however. A Critical Chain project is run in a fundamentally different way than a traditional critical path project, and if you don't take those differences into account the EVM outputs won't be very useful.

My goal is to provide a method to calculate real-time EVM metrics in a way that is useful to both external stakeholders and the project team. EVM is so entrenched, and one of the major reasons (in my opinion) that Critical Chain meets with resistance is because EVM doesn't make any sense with it. Automatically, you're left with a huge percentage of projects that can't use Critical Chain.

As I research and come up with new ideas, I'll keep this blog updated.

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12/31/2006 - Maiden Post

Hello, my name is Josh Nankivel. I'm creating this blog as a way for me to formulate and refine my thoughts about project management and process improvement. Hopefully it will help my writing and make me more articulate and clear. To start with, here's a little about me.

I'm in school now majoring in project management. A year from now I will be done with my BS and started on my masters degree, an MBA with a concentration in project management. At work, I'm in information systems and work on many small projects alone, and also in larger projects as a team member and project lead. I am full time both at work and school, so with all that and the family I've got little spare time, which I usually use to read and think about project management.

I've been in technology-centric positions for about 11 years now, half of that as a techie and half as a manager. I've got a LinkedIn profile with some more info. Some of my specific interests include various project management methodologies, the Theory of Constraints and related project management applications like Critical Chain, Earned Value Management applications, and process/business improvement methodologies. I read a lot of books, listen to a lot of podcasts, and absorb as much online content including articles and forums as I can.

Hopefully I will be able to find some time to post to this blog at least once a week or more.