Project Management & Measurement gamed

Measurement

Project management tends to be all about outcome metrics. Tracking costs vs. plan, Earned Value, Cost and Schedule Performance Indices, consumed slack – all are about what happened. Granted, there’s an effort inherent to those practices that says the future can be predicted by understanding the past, however, that approach also seems to indicate that errors are acceptable. Especially if we read a bunch of charts and graphs and variance analyses to tell us that we had a problem some number of days, or weeks, ago.

Somehow, that doesn’t seem good enough. [Read more]

Management Innovation Exchange, and the weekly rewind

Think Differently

I’m not certain how many of the usual readers of this blog are aware of the Management Innovation Exchange. According to their site:

What is the MIX?

An open innovation project…

The Management Innovation eXchange (MIX) is an open innovation project aimed at reinventing management for the 21st century. The premise: while “modern” management is one of humankind’s most important inventions, it is now a mature technology that must be reinvented for a new age.

The spur for a revolution in management… [Read more]

Last week’s tweets

In case you missed it, here are some tweet & re-tweets of articles & other things that caught my eye last week: From Others: From @tedcoine: YES!! RT @shawmu: Actually give a S### about the development of individuals.ow.ly/8SkuB via @kris_dunn From @ShingoPrize: Robert Miller said Shingo Prize focuses on more than just culture, it focuses on how [...]

Making Your Network…Work

Recently, I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to witness several strong examples of the positive impact that real, strategic networking can have.

Being a part of these particular examples got me thinking a bit more about networking and what it truly means in the age of Facebook and LinkedIn. [Read more]

The management lessons of angry birds

Angry Birds, that time-draining app that has spawned a cult phenomenon and a slew of stuffed toys at Walmart, might seem like an odd place to look for wisdom on accomplishing tasks. Nonetheless, the game offers several highly useful examples of how to manage yourself and others in order to get things accomplished: [Read more]

Lean for Life – Defining Value (Personal Life)

As individuals, we’re in the unique position of being both the ‘customer’ and the ‘producer’ in our lives. We (as ‘customers’) directly experience the results of the actions we take and the decisions we make as ‘producers’ (for good or bad). We ‘reap what we sow.’

From a Lean perspective, this is an absolutely tremendous position to be in!

After all, if you, as the ‘customer,’ are responsible for defining the value you seek in your life, who better to create and deliver that value that you yourself! [Read more]

The recipe: From Estimating to Planning

Estimating is just one step along the way towards designing an executable project. The next thing that is necessary is a plan – and estimating is a quite different exercise from planning. A plan takes into account not just what needs to be done when, but how things move throughout the project, who moves them, when it will happen, what that movement enables or restricts, and an identification of what might change over the course of the project. [Read more]

Process Improvement and the free flow of laundry

Around the house, we’ve always had a problem with laundry. There’s always a heap waiting to be ironed, hampers are overflowing, and many morning a search for clean socks would necessitate a trip to the basement to dig out a fresh pair from a laundry basket that was washed a week ago but still waiting to be folded.

While a lot of folks might point to large-scale factory-wide process improvement efforts that take months to design and implement, I’m pretty content knowing that I was able to take all those concepts and apply them right here…….at home…..where it counts. [Read more]

The uncluttered mind

I came across this site recently, and I have to say, it is absolutely fascinating. Unclutterer.com is a fascinating, intensive site dedicated to improving personal productivity and quality of life by the elimination of unnecessary stuff.  The site’s dozens of topics range from bedroom and kitchen, to college dorm, office, and general productivity and time management. The Productivity [...]

Process And Inventory Turns

You will never find a magic technology tool that you buy and that will instantly start a waterfall of cash onto your bottom line.

Technology?

Sure – it can help automate or standardize a good process. But people have to be doing the hard work involved in those processes first. [Read more]