For those familiar with the lean approach to the work or the Toyota Way, you my already know about the concept of Muda. Muda is one of the three categories associated with lean that impact performance and costs to the organization. Muda is regarded to have seven waste types or areas or actions that cause waste. Over […]
Kanban and Visual Management Kanban is a lean method for identifying and managing the work and the flow, and it does so by creating a pull through environment. We will start by identifying the work we need to do. Each work item we need to do will end up on an individual card. The cards […]
If you have been a project manager for any time at all, you probably have experienced competing demands from the sponsors for the project. The sponsor is the person(s) who drive the scope of the project in conventional projects. In some instances, the project manager may find that there are in fact multiple sponsors and […]
Value, Scope and Change Requests Change requests are part of any development project. Change requests are sometimes necessary as we learn by building and doing the work. In my experience, change requests often are born from requirements we thought we understood, only to learn by working with the product or system that we really did […]
The team My first job out of university was with a small product development and manufacturing company. The company developed their own embedded products for sale all over the world. I do not know how this collection of technicians and engineers ended up as a tight or as close when it came to work. The group […]
Queuing Theory Queuing theory is the study of waiting lines and is associated with business in determining resources needed to achieve service business throughput objectives, but it does not just apply to services and material handling. Queuing Theory and Billable Hours I have worked at companies that had a target for billable hours, that well […]
Poor Process or Poor Execution I have used both conventional approaches to projects, as well as agile. In fact, i have used some of the agile techniques in conventional projects with success. I know, anecdotal but perhaps an interesting anecdote. Conventional projects have had considerable high failure reported (Standish Group Studies for example). The problem […]
What does not work -duration Besides wasting time planning out many months into the future as if we could see and control that far ahead, there have been studies over the years that have established an inverse correlation between the length of time a project runs and project success rate. Perhaps this does not sound […]
(Lexington, NC, September 28, 2018) – Cognitive biases are always at work, playing dirty tricks behind our perceptions. Jon M. Quigley, Founder and Principal, Value Transformation, will address this issue in his latest presentation, “Things that Secretly Sabotage your Project and Team” to be held on Thursday, October 4, 2018 from 07:00 pm to 07:50 […]
Instead of No Estimates Instead of no estimates, we should consider adjusting our approach to estimates that eliminate the abuse, and still allows for the answers to the business questions, “does this project improve our bottom line” allowing the business to determine if the company really wants to undertake the project, and if so, do […]