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| TOP
STORY |
| Resource
Management in Multi Project Organizations
Part 2: Tactics for Professional Development and Satisfaction
by Dr. Ajai
Kapoor
In Part 1, we defined the
primary responsibilities of Resource Managers (or
functional managers) in multi project organizations
as:
- Resource effectiveness:
doing work in a timely and effective manner, to
maximize project speed and throughput
- Professional
Development and Satisfaction: provide ample
opportunities and options to technical resources
for professional development
- Capacity Management:
maintain the right levels of capacity, which also
requires minimizing the time between hiring resources
and making them productive
We have already covered the
tactics for increasing resource effectiveness in the
previous article. This article is about the second
aspect, i.e. professional development and satisfaction.
The tactics in this area are largely independent of
critical chain. Our focus is how critical chain, especially
Buffer Management helps deploy those tactics.
Developing people professionally
and keeping them satisfied requires an environment
that induces and nurtures motivation. To create such
an environment:
- Managers have
to walk a fine line between micro-managing and being
supportive.
For people to enjoy a job well done in an environment
riddled with uncertainties, managers need to harness
the problem-solving skills and creativity of people
who are doing the work. At the same time, they
must intervene and provide support so that their
authority, experience, judgment are fully leveraged;
otherwise people doing the work could get easily
frustrated.
Herein lies the dilemma: you intervene too much,
and you induce indifference and distrust. You
delegate too much and you not only jeopardize
project completion, but also risk that people
will not be able to perform to their fullest potential.
This dilemma is directly relevant to implementing
Critical Chain. Traditionally work is delegated
when the individual makes a commitment and is
then measured against this commitment. In a Critical
Chain implementation the manager has to make the
distinction between performance and uncertainty.
To prevent local safeties in tasks there is no
measurement against a committed duration or date
for a task. As a result some ongoing interaction
between manager and individual becomes necessary.
This interaction can allow the dilemma to be addressed.
The creation of a task manager role focused on
actions that help prevent the safety from being
wasted allows the individual and manager to contribute
effectively. The impact on buffers provide a way
to focus the valuable problem solving skills of
the organization in the right areas.
- People should
be afforded an opportunity to work on a variety
of jobs, and also a choice of work.
Variety and choice can be excellent motivators
in many project environments. Variety and choice
also help people grow and develop very fast. Buffer
Management has a direct benefit in this area,
because resources can be pooled across projects
- thanks to task-level priorities; and because
unless the jobs are red, they can be allowed to
choose between various tasks that are ready to
be done.
- People should
be able to evaluate their contribution to the overall
performance of the organization.
People can contribute in terms of scope, quality
and timeliness of work. Buffer Management provides
a direct and visible feedback on how local performance
relates to overall progress on the project. The
overall critical chain management system helps
create an environment where priorities are stable,
and not every job is "hot" so that people
can focus and do high quality work, and tackle
tough problems without feeling rushed all the
time.
Of course, all the above
benefits assume fundamental management skills; critical
chain cannot make bad managers good, but it can help
good managers be good. In Part 3, we will conclude
this series with tactics and insights for Capacity
Management.
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| CUSTOMER
CONFERENCE |
| Project
Flow 2005
Superior Execution. Superior Results.
September
8-9, Chicago, IL
We are pleased
to report that this year's customer conference, Project
Flow 2005 is shaping up to be as power-packed as last
year's. The agenda includes:
- Keynote on Situational
Leadership: Dr. Richard Ruhe from Ken Blanchard
Companies will present a powerful and simple model
for managing and developing people. Dr Ken Blanchard
is the author of the famed One Minute Manager series,
including "Leadership and the One Minute Manager".
In his keynote, Dr. Ruhe will focus on developing
management skills in project organizations, where
uncertainties are high and need for innovation on
the frontline is paramount.
- Bosch CCTV:
Ted van Groningen, Chief Technical Officer
- HP Digital Camera
Group: Lisa Roberts, Program Manager
- US Air Force,
Warner Robbins Air Logistics Center: Bill
Best, Deputy Division Chief
- US Marine Corps:
Carl Chisam, Production Manager
- Oregon Freeze
Dry: Alan Huster, Process Engineering Manager
- Airgo Networks:
John Quigley, Vice President of Engineering
- Viable Vision
for Projects: Realizing High Growth and
Very High Profits,
Tali Mastboim, Partner
- Exploiting the Power
of Critical Chain: What We Have Learned: Dr.
Ajai Kapoor, VP Services, Realization
- Critical Chain
and Earned Value Management: Ken Francis,
TOC Expert
- Concerto Roadmap:
Ravi Shankar, VP Engineering, Realization
For a detailed
agenda, click
here.
Deadline
for registration is August 31st
Fees:  Register
by July 28th - $350 per person
Register
by August 31st - $750 per person
Register online: www.acteva.com/go/realization
- When: September
8-9, 2005
- Where: Chicago
Marriott O’Hare
8535
W. Higgins Road
Chicago,
IL 60631
Phone:
773-693-4444
Special Rates: Please
mention Realization and Project Flow 2005 to receive
the special hotel rate of $139 per night. Rooms are
limited, available on a first-come, first-served basis.
Visit the Chicago Marriott's website at: www.marriott.com/property/propertypage/CHIAP
*
To request a DVD of presentations from Project Flow
2004, click
here.
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| CONCERTO
SOFTWARE UPDATES |
We
are always looking for opportunities to make the software
more useful, and your suggestions are welcome. Following
are the various enhancements that have been made in
the recent months:
Pipeline Planning
Enhancements:
- Option to Consider
P2P links in Pipelining: This option simplifies
pipeline planning process in situations where P2P
links have been defined. Additionally, it is now
also possible to view conflicts with contractual
milestones and P2P milestones of high priority projects.
This helps determine if a conflict is within noise
or will have an impact on project due date.
- Advanced DDQ Option:
A new option
is scheduling projects as early as possible, which
is useful for release control in high volume environments.
- Duration Reduction
What-if (Beta): This
feature allows duration reduction percentage to
be specified for selected projects/resources and
then compare due-dates obtained with and without
duration reduction.
Infrastructure Enhancements:
- Predefined Custom
Text Field Configuration: Custom
text fields can now be configured to show predefined
values in drop down list. This can be used to capture
information such as standard delay reasons.
- Microsoft Project
2003 Support: Concerto
now supports Microsoft Project 2003 along with Microsoft
Project 2002 and Microsoft Project 2000.
- Database Reconnection:
If the database
connection goes down then Concerto server will try
to reconnect during server refresh or when users
try to access reports over the web.
- Project Import
Utility: A
utility is now available to import project data
in a text file, add the project to the database,
and automatically run CC on it.
- Additional Parameter
for Email Alerts: An additional parameter
can be defined for "ready to start" tasks
to specify the number of days prior to the suggested
start date that task managers are sent alerts.
Performance Enhancements:
- Execution Views:
Speed has been further improved for Task
Level Priority, Project Control and Portfolio Status
reports for databases with large number of projects,
especially if you are using SQL Server as your database
(if you use Oracle, speed performance was already
very good).
- Resource Portal:
Performance has been improved for loading
the Resource Portal when there are many calendars
in the database.
- Task Mgt: Performance
has been improved for loading of filters in Task
Mgt.
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