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.The review should be called a lessons-learned or process review.I have deliberately avoided the word audit, because nobodylikes to be audited.Historically, an audit has been designed tocatch people doing things they shouldn t have done so that theycan be penalized in some way.If you go around auditing people,you can be sure they will hide from you anything they don t wantyou to know, and it is those very things that could help the com-pany learn and grow.As Dr.W.Edwards Deming has pointed out in his book, Outof the Crisis, there are two kinds of organizations in this worldtoday those that are getting better and those that are dying.Anorganization that stands still is dying.It just doesn t know it yet.The reason? The competition is not sitting by idly.It is doingnew things, some of which may be better than yours.If youaren t improving, you will be passed by,and soon you won t have a market.Good managementThe same is true of every part of anorganization.You can t suboptimize, im-of projects can giveproving just manufacturing.You have toyou a competitiveimprove every department, and thatincludes how you run projects.advantage.In fact, good project managementcan give you a real competitive advan-tage, especially in product development.If you are sloppy in man-aging your projects, you don t have good control of development Project Control and Evaluation 109costs.That means that you have to either sell a lot of product orcharge large margins to cover your development costs so that theproject is worth doing in the first place.If you can t sell a lot ofwidgets, then you have to charge the large margin.If your competitor, on the other hand, has good cost control,it can charge smaller margins and still be sure that it recovers itsinvestment and makes money.Thus, it has a competitive advan-tage over you because of its better control of project work.Additionally, in order to learn, people require feedback, likethat gained by a team from reviewinggame films.The last phase of a projectIn order to learn, weshould be a final process review, con-must have feedback.ducted so that the management of pro-jects can be improved.However, such aFurthermore, weprocess review should not be conductedtend to learn moreonly at the end of the project.Rather,process reviews should be done at majorfrom mistakes thanmilestones in the project or every threefrom successes,months, whichever comes first, so thatlearning can take place as the job pro-painful though thatgresses.Furthermore, if a project is get-ting into serious trouble, the processmay be to admit.review should reveal the difficulty so thata decision can be made to continue or terminate the work.Following are some of the general reasons for conductingperiodic project process reviews.You should be able to:Improve project performance together with the manage-ment of the project.Ensure that quality of project work does not take a back seatto schedule and cost concerns.Reveal developing problems early so that action can be takento deal with them.Identify areas where other projects (current or future) shouldbe managed differently. 110 Fundamentals of Project ManagementKeep client(s) informed of project status.This can also helpensure that the completed project will meet the needs of theclient.Reaffirm the organization s commitment to the project for thebenefit of project team members.Conducting the Project Process ReviewIdeally, a project process review should be conducted by an inde-pendent examiner, who can remain objective in the assessmentof information.However, the process review must be conductedin a spirit of learning, rather than in a climate of blame and pun-ishment.If people are afraid that they will be strung up forproblems, then they will hide those problems if at all possible.Even so, openness is hard to achieve.In many organizations,the climate has been punitive for so longthat people are reluctant to reveal anyProcess reviewsless-than-perfect aspects of project perfor-conducted asmance.Dr.Chris Argyris, in his book,Overcoming Organizational Defenses,witch-hunts willhas described the processes by whichorganizations continue ineffective prac- produce witches.tices.All of them are intended to helpindividuals save face or avoid embarrassment.In the end, theyalso prevent organizational learning.Two questions should be asked in the review.The first is, What have we done well so far?, and the second is, What dowe want to improve (or do better) in the future? Notice that Iam not asking, What have we done badly? That questionserves only to make everyone defensive, because they assumethat you will punish them for things done wrong.Furthermore,there is always the possibility that nothing has been done wrong,but there is always room to improve.Finally, the results of the review should be published.Other-wise, the only people in the organization who can take advantageof it are the members of the team just reviewed.If other teams Project Control and Evaluation 111know what was learned, then they can benefit from that informa-tion.In the next section, we look at what the report should contain.The Process Review ReportA company may decide to conduct process reviews in varyingdegrees of thoroughness, from totally comprehensive, to partial,to less formal and cursory.A formal, comprehensive processreview should be followed by a report.The report should containas a minimum the following:Current project status.The best way to do this is to useearned value analysis, as presented in the following chapter.However, when earned value analysis is not used, statusshould still be reported with as great accuracy as possible.Future status.This is a forecast of what is expected to happenin the project.Are significant deviations expected in sched-ule, cost, performance, or scope? If so, the report should spec-ify the nature of the changes.Status of critical tasks.The report should describe the statusof critical tasks, particularly those on the critical path.Tasksthat have high levels of technical risk should be given specialattention, as should those being performed by outside ven-dors or subcontractors, over which the project manager mayhave limited control.Risk assessment.The report should mention any identifiedrisks that could lead to monetary loss, project failure, or otherliabilities.Information relevant to other projects [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.The review should be called a lessons-learned or process review.I have deliberately avoided the word audit, because nobodylikes to be audited.Historically, an audit has been designed tocatch people doing things they shouldn t have done so that theycan be penalized in some way.If you go around auditing people,you can be sure they will hide from you anything they don t wantyou to know, and it is those very things that could help the com-pany learn and grow.As Dr.W.Edwards Deming has pointed out in his book, Outof the Crisis, there are two kinds of organizations in this worldtoday those that are getting better and those that are dying.Anorganization that stands still is dying.It just doesn t know it yet.The reason? The competition is not sitting by idly.It is doingnew things, some of which may be better than yours.If youaren t improving, you will be passed by,and soon you won t have a market.Good managementThe same is true of every part of anorganization.You can t suboptimize, im-of projects can giveproving just manufacturing.You have toyou a competitiveimprove every department, and thatincludes how you run projects.advantage.In fact, good project managementcan give you a real competitive advan-tage, especially in product development.If you are sloppy in man-aging your projects, you don t have good control of development Project Control and Evaluation 109costs.That means that you have to either sell a lot of product orcharge large margins to cover your development costs so that theproject is worth doing in the first place.If you can t sell a lot ofwidgets, then you have to charge the large margin.If your competitor, on the other hand, has good cost control,it can charge smaller margins and still be sure that it recovers itsinvestment and makes money.Thus, it has a competitive advan-tage over you because of its better control of project work.Additionally, in order to learn, people require feedback, likethat gained by a team from reviewinggame films.The last phase of a projectIn order to learn, weshould be a final process review, con-must have feedback.ducted so that the management of pro-jects can be improved.However, such aFurthermore, weprocess review should not be conductedtend to learn moreonly at the end of the project.Rather,process reviews should be done at majorfrom mistakes thanmilestones in the project or every threefrom successes,months, whichever comes first, so thatlearning can take place as the job pro-painful though thatgresses.Furthermore, if a project is get-ting into serious trouble, the processmay be to admit.review should reveal the difficulty so thata decision can be made to continue or terminate the work.Following are some of the general reasons for conductingperiodic project process reviews.You should be able to:Improve project performance together with the manage-ment of the project.Ensure that quality of project work does not take a back seatto schedule and cost concerns.Reveal developing problems early so that action can be takento deal with them.Identify areas where other projects (current or future) shouldbe managed differently. 110 Fundamentals of Project ManagementKeep client(s) informed of project status.This can also helpensure that the completed project will meet the needs of theclient.Reaffirm the organization s commitment to the project for thebenefit of project team members.Conducting the Project Process ReviewIdeally, a project process review should be conducted by an inde-pendent examiner, who can remain objective in the assessmentof information.However, the process review must be conductedin a spirit of learning, rather than in a climate of blame and pun-ishment.If people are afraid that they will be strung up forproblems, then they will hide those problems if at all possible.Even so, openness is hard to achieve.In many organizations,the climate has been punitive for so longthat people are reluctant to reveal anyProcess reviewsless-than-perfect aspects of project perfor-conducted asmance.Dr.Chris Argyris, in his book,Overcoming Organizational Defenses,witch-hunts willhas described the processes by whichorganizations continue ineffective prac- produce witches.tices.All of them are intended to helpindividuals save face or avoid embarrassment.In the end, theyalso prevent organizational learning.Two questions should be asked in the review.The first is, What have we done well so far?, and the second is, What dowe want to improve (or do better) in the future? Notice that Iam not asking, What have we done badly? That questionserves only to make everyone defensive, because they assumethat you will punish them for things done wrong.Furthermore,there is always the possibility that nothing has been done wrong,but there is always room to improve.Finally, the results of the review should be published.Other-wise, the only people in the organization who can take advantageof it are the members of the team just reviewed.If other teams Project Control and Evaluation 111know what was learned, then they can benefit from that informa-tion.In the next section, we look at what the report should contain.The Process Review ReportA company may decide to conduct process reviews in varyingdegrees of thoroughness, from totally comprehensive, to partial,to less formal and cursory.A formal, comprehensive processreview should be followed by a report.The report should containas a minimum the following:Current project status.The best way to do this is to useearned value analysis, as presented in the following chapter.However, when earned value analysis is not used, statusshould still be reported with as great accuracy as possible.Future status.This is a forecast of what is expected to happenin the project.Are significant deviations expected in sched-ule, cost, performance, or scope? If so, the report should spec-ify the nature of the changes.Status of critical tasks.The report should describe the statusof critical tasks, particularly those on the critical path.Tasksthat have high levels of technical risk should be given specialattention, as should those being performed by outside ven-dors or subcontractors, over which the project manager mayhave limited control.Risk assessment.The report should mention any identifiedrisks that could lead to monetary loss, project failure, or otherliabilities.Information relevant to other projects [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]