resource management Archives - Accendo Reliability

Is a Task a Deliverable?

Tasks (or action items) are a fundamental building block of an ongoing work-effort or project schedule. While we tend to think of completed actions as deliverables, a project schedule can also be considered a project deliverable….and the value of well-written task (within the schedule or otherwise) is often overlooked.

Generally, a task begins with a verb (some action to be performed) to achieve a milestone or outcome to some desired level of completion. (Recall a previous related article where we discussed the “definition of done”.)

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by Robert Allen 1 Comment

The Three Disciplines and Change Management

In this weeks article, we’ll explore how the three disciplines (product development, process improvement and project management) can enable change management.

First, it’s worth reflecting on how these disciplines fit together. Starting with product development our goal is to understand customer value, and to optimize the product (or service) by maximizing customer value and minimizing cost. It can be seen that, process improvement naturally complements this objective as way to further reduce costs. In addition, project management establishes how product development and process improvement is planned, executed, controlled and monitored.

Now let’s look at some key attributes of change management, along with elements of the three disciplines mentioned above.

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Project Governance and Resource Management

All projects or programs have a formal or informal resource management process, with the goal of completing projects on time, within budget and with good project quality.

In order to meet this goal, the resource management objectives are:

the quantity of estimated resources is accurate
the resource role requirements are clear and precise
the resources meet or exceed the expectations (requirements)
the resources are added in a timely manner
cost of the resources is minimized to the extent possible

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The Definition of Done

In my previous article, we reviewed the project approval committee, and emphasized approval to start projects and/or approve projects in-process.

With any type of project oversight, presentations or project schedules are often reviewed.

For a more lean project management approach it would help to consider reviewing the actual deliverables, including a mutual understanding of the “definition of done”.

“Definition of done” is the agreed-upon evidence of completion of a process, activity or milestone and usually includes a project deliverable. Some examples of deliverables might include the project plan, project schedule, documents (requirements document, plans, and reports), analysis, and designs (drawings). Other considerations can be built-into “definition of done” including compliance, acceptance/sign-off, exceptions and best practices.

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The Project Approval Committee

A project approval committee can be an effective way to enable business decision-making and ensure projects are successful.

Committees may be known as a project review or steering committee; however, consider the following (proposed) objectives as follows:

Approve new projects (and project resources)
Approve project phase (phase gate) completion
Approve project go-forward plans (including resources)
Cancel projects that no longer make business sense
Prevent rogue/unapproved projects from consuming resources
Direct / redirect projects to complete key tasks or deliverables before moving forward
Enforce project management planning and execution

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Statement of Work Fundamentals

In my last article, we reviewed a proposed Product Life Cycle process, which starts with a “Define” phase. In the “Define” phase, we are defining the project as well as the product.

We previously discussed the ‘technical leg’ of this process with the market analysis, identifying customer needs, product requirements, verification and validation, etc. [Read more…]

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A Proposed Product Life Cycle Process

In my previous article we covered the advantages of a phase and gate structure for new product development. Now we can discuss some proposed phase names for a new product development or product life cycle (PLC) process.

An organization may have an existing PLC process ‘baked-in’ to their culture and process documentation. Accordingly, there’s a wide range of PLC phase names, all of which are likely acceptable and based on solid reasoning.

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Phase and Gate Structure for New Product Development

In previous articles we defined an element of lean as a phase and gate structure for new product development. This assumes a waterfall approach to the project (versus agile product development).

A new product life cycle phase gate structure might entail, for example: “Definition, Concept, Design, Verification, Qualification, Production and End-of-Life”. (Your organization might decide on different phase names.)

There’s an apparent contradiction in using a waterfall project approach and calling it lean project management, however. A goal of any lean process is to work toward ‘single piece’ or continuous flow: agile product development is more like ‘single piece flow’ of information, versus waterfall which is more like ‘batch processing’ of information.

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Lean Project Management for Product Development

My last article covered a scalable model for lean product development depending on the number of projects and technical objectives.

Let’s start with the foundational elements from this model:

Facilitate a lean project
Understand customer needs (requirements validation and/or agile product development)
Maximize customer (product) value (product value estimation)

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