We have never seen a meaningful employee evaluation system. The abominations are generally designed as a tool to assess the performance of the employee with respect to corporate goals. When they present the illusion of quantification, the values are really qualitative and they will inflate over time as people are ‘soft’ about providing ‘real’ assessment. […]
This blog post is born out of a response to the Named Risk post from Ed Arnold on www.LinkedIn.com. He left the reply below: In my experience, a lot of time/effort is wasted when project owners change. The knowledge gets lost, even if they leave their spreadsheets and power points behind. The answer: a collaborative […]
Brainstorming as neologism began with Alex Osborn of the advertising agency BBDO in 1942. His primary concern was creative thinking. In general, classical brainstorming generally follows this pattern: Gather a group of people Decide on a duration and quantity of ideas desired Solicit ideas from group members No editing, snide comments, or insults Collect ideas […]
Over the years, we have heard executive level individuals cry out for cultural change in their organizations without understanding the ramifications of what they are saying. With cultural transformation as usually touted, we are talking about massive levels of upheaval. The upheaval approach can be counterproductive if it does little more than produce a culture […]
The real kaizen is all about the 10,000 things. Maasaki Imai’s description of relentless, creeping quality improvement is apt. It also fits with the comprehensive philosophy of total quality management (TQM). We say “real” kaizen because we have so-called kaizen events that have nothing to do with inexorable cultural change and a whole to do […]
The term “10,000 things” originates in the Far East and generally connotes the idea of many things. It is not a synonym for “everything.” Regardless, the 10,000 things are what we must consider when we go about making long-lasting change. We frequently see books and other media that promise “transformation,” but we know speedy transformation […]
A project comes to an end and now we are in a position to really critique or learn how things went. Ideally, we were learning all along, and now we have the final opportunity to review the project. If our organization has heavy project management influences, we may have a “white book” that captures the […]
Knowing a risk exists and not taking action is similar to standing on the tracks watching as the train nears. You must spend time creating alternative plans in the event the train does, in fact, come. It has been our observation that most project teams, under the pressure to deliver to the current plan, do […]
The longer a project is active, the more likely there will be interference with the other projects the organization undertakes. We believe this is one of the attractions of scrum or the other agile project management methods, which are designed to offset the fallacious multitasking approaches. In these agile models, we find the project team […]
Several quality tools can help to evoke the risks that may be associated with your project. One such tool usually associated with cause and effect is the Ishikawa diagram. We can use this tool to explore risks as well. We will explore what happens (cause) and how it will impact (affect) our project and product. […]