Project Lessons Learned Fast Track Overlapping Phases

Project Lessons Learned Fast Track Overlapping Phases

What you would attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?

Project Management LESSONS LEARNED
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Fast Track - Overlapping Phases LL

Lessons Learned

Project Points
Our Monthly Publication for Clients,
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Lessons Learned are snips of knowledge
regarding mistakes in project development,
management, control and/or finance. They
are put forward for the benefit of Project
Executive Group subscribers.

The key to developing quality solutions to new problems is to ask the right questions and to
ask them early enough.
In situations in which information or knowledge concerning "how to do" is incomplete, early
involvement of downstream representatives in upstream planning is the best way to reveal
problems quickly.
Correcting these problems is both easier and faster at early stages of the project than it
would be if these problems appeared later on, during implementation.
You should expect mistakes to happen whenever you start work in a new area. The key to
your success lies in your ability to find these mistakes early, and to correct them
immediately.
Early involvement of downstream representatives in upstream planning enables the timely
accessing of essential information. This early transfer of information helps to better prepare
the downstream team for implementation.
To compete better in a relay race, the next runner starts warming up and actually starts
running before the baton is handed off. The same thing happens in successful projects.
Early involvement ensures that when the time comes for responsibility to be passed, there
is no stop-and-start because the leadership of the next phase is already fully up to speed.
Face-to-face interaction enables the quick establishment of appreciation for one another's
competence and reliability. This appreciation may reduce the cost of monitoring
transactions between organizations.
Delegating responsibility and empowering your people will take your time at first, but will
save you time later.
For smooth transfer of the project, it is not enough to train the users. Involving unqualified
users will also not work and involving the users too late will yield only limited benefits
because their expertise will have little influence on the plan.
To ensure a better plan and a smooth and fast handoff from execution to start-up to
operation, include a qualified user as a member of the project team right from the
beginning.
Obtaining the appropriate people for a project team requires a well-planned "selling" effort.
Early involvement of project stakeholders, in which two-way communication is promoted,
facilitates and expedites project acceptance and approval.
In uncertain situations that require input and support form numerous stakeholders,
spending more up-front effort on identifying and addressing their concerns — when plans
are still tentative and flexible — saves considerably more resources and time later in the
life of the project.
Early on, a semiprofessional but empowered user can contribute novel ideas to a
professional design team.
In novel situations, optimization based on the refinement of an existing solution is not the
most promising and time-effective approach. Significant and timely improvements may
result from quick divergence, which is based on identifying and addressing new problems,
by a team with sufficient skill diversity.
The project team can successfully exploit areas of opportunity if the areas are identified
and addressed early on. To fulfill this condition, you should create a team that includes all
relevant parties and skills right from the beginning.
The best way to stay close to your customers is to have them on your team.
Compressing schedules by overlapping engineering and construction requires breaking
down the engineering work into small increments adjusted to the construction schedule.
(FAST TRACK)
To maintain smooth production, the engineering group must be flexible and cater to
construction needs. At the same time, however, the construction group must be willing to
shape its demands according to engineering constraints, in particular to it lack of
information (uncertainty).
This mutual adjustment can be maintained by continuous coordination and frequent two-
way communication between the engineering and construction groups.
Compressing the schedule by overlapping engineering and construction phases requires
genuine cooperation between the engineering and construction groups.
You can execute engineering concurrently with process development, if you maintain clear
boundaries between them and ensure that the scope for engineering is relatively stable
(that is, it has built-in flexibility for changes).
You build flexibility into the plan by incorporating some redundancy. Since this flexibility will
not be sufficient to cope with all future changes, you also develop capability for flexible
behavior.
This flexible behavior can be achieved when the upstream and downstream teams share
one leader who skillfully creates a collaborative culture environment.
To enable quick responsiveness, this flexible behavior capability should be coupled with
early detection and incorporation of changes. This, in turn, is achieved by continuously and
closely monitoring changes in process development, and by adhering to a change
management procedure in engineering.
Sound understanding of upstream and downstream work is required in order to select the
right amount of redundancies — enough to establish a stable scope but not so much that
excessive resources are wasted.
When the kind of uncertainty faced by the upstream and downstream groups is so vastly
different, it is better to establish two different teams, with a joint leader who integrates
their work by focusing on the interface between these two teams.
It is imperative to adjust managerial philosophy to the situation. To minimize the confusing
and sometimes paralyzing effects of extremely high uncertainty, you should keep the
engineering team focused on a clear scope of work. The process development team should
be ready to develop partial or incremental expectations and plans, as well as be willing to
share its achievements (and failures) with others as soon as possible.
Since this openness of the process development team exposes weaknesses and mistakes,
and clarifies the limit of its ability much more that the sequential phase mode of operation,
it will take place only with strong commitment to common project objectives, which in turn
requires strong integrative leadership.
In cases of extremely high speed, overlapping phases by transferring small batches of
intermediate output becomes a continuous flow of tiny bits of work from one phase to
another.
In this mode of work, it is impossible for upper management to conduct formal reviews at
the end of each phase. Review is accomplished in real time by the project team, which is
granted substantial autonomy.
Bureaucracy and speed do not mix. Successful project leaders attempt to eliminate
bureaucracy wherever possible. They form small teams that adopt very simple and
informal working procedures.
When working under conditions of high speed and uncertainty, it is essential to frequently
review product performance — daily and weekly — and to employ the feedback as the
basis for further planning.
Enforced co-location and isolation, combined with the full time assignment of team
members, is essential for creating aligned, committed, and responsive teams.
By choosing to hire a manufacturing contractor, you enable a faster turnover from
construction to start-up, and from start-up to manufacturing. Also, the project manager's
autonomy and ability to use simple and flexible procedures is further enhanced by hiring an
external contractor.
Faster should not necessarily be more expensive. You can meet a demanding schedule in
uncertain conditions and save money by employing all these steps.
To shorten the construction schedule, you have to divide the work into small, repetitive
activities and, if possible, perform them at the same time.
To enable a smooth production process when interdependent activities
overlap, you have to loosen their linkages by employing temporary buffers.
Improving performance of novel tasks requires continuous planning and a
culture that fosters open communication with colleagues and subordinates.
It also requires providing project leaders with substantial autonomy to make changes and
to request and receive more resources.
Most important, it requires a culture that encourages managers to engage in on-site
learning by experimentation.
A busy practitioner who manages a short-term job does not have the time, resources, or
skills to conduct a formal and rigorous improvement study. Yet, by using quick experiments
he or she can quickly devise valid and efficient work methods.
Collecting information for continuous planning and learning, carried out by those who are
intimately close to the implementation, is the most effective control.
Although a contractor's primary interest is usually in reducing construction cost, he or she
may find that a lower-cost method is often a faster one as well.
Overlapping of tasks is vital to accelerate speed.
Detailed planning before implementation and planning by feedback during implementation
are both paramount to success in cases in which project requirements call for extreme
speed, but project definition is clear and stable.
In these cases, having clearly defined the tasks and those responsible for. them
beforehand minimizes necessary management input during the hectic implementation
period.
When response becomes over-learned, people can respond more quickly and with fewer
revisions. In situations that require you to work more intelligently but primarily faster,
training is very important.
People also become more confident with overlapping, which enables them to focus all their
energies on getting ready to accomplish the task. This is crucial, since the lack of
confidence prior to a very demanding task might paralyze people.
Management-by-wandering-around (MBWA) provides the best means for review and control.
Leadership, teamwork, and constant communication are crucial for quick adaptation.
A sense of competition and esprit de corps are essential in energizing the team and
sustaining high team spirit.
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