Product Based Planning: lean or not lean?

A recent survey of Prince2 users showed that Product Based Planning is their favourite part of Prince2 – without it, Prince2 would not be Prince2, they said. It's their favourite, but is it lean?

Product Based Planning is essentially lean for several reasons.
• It focuses on the end deliverable
• The product breakdown structure is a good means to get teamwork and consensus (I suggest to create the PBS using sticky notes in front of a flip chart, with the team all standing and participating)
• The product breakdown structure is a good communications tool
• It reduces the complexity of the planning process (typically there are 20 products but hundreds of tasks)
• It turns planning into a structured process
• It supports management by stages, which allows for late commitment (which is a lean keystone)
• Product descriptions help capture business requirements and quality criteria and therefore help to avoid rework
• Product descriptions can be written on a just-in-time basis (typically in the stage before the product will be produced)

Lean or not lean? Product Based Planning is decidedly lean.

How long does your project team spend writings powerpoints? And how long in meetings watching powerpoints?

Go lean... http://ping.fm/0PlSK

Reduce Powerpoint to reduce waste

Lean or not lean? How many hours per week does your project team spend on powerpoint?

Powerpoint generates waste in various ways.
• Team members waste hours and days writing powerpoints.
• Planners waste time reconciling powerpoint pictures with real plans
• Project teams waste time in meetings watching vacuous, brain-numbing powerpoints which don't generate clarity or new ideas.

Lean project management eliminates waste. If you want to go lean, you must attack waste, and that means a major review of how you use powerpoint.

Lean or not lean? Powerpoint ain't lean

In the coming months, we have some major programme deliverables. I'm working on a lean solution. http://bit.ly/bTQsCa. Lean or not lean?

Lean: multi-functional project teams

Lean or not lean? I'm struggling to get multi-functional teams working in our programme. Today, our programme organisation mirrors the current business teams (the BAU "silos"). In the coming months we have some major deliverables to produce, where all functional teams must cooperate. With today's organisation, the teams can't readily plan their work, as they each have a silo view - they are highly dependent on other teams for scheduling and decisions, for inputs and outputs.

The lean approach is to maximise cross functional team work. Each multi-functional team can then work back from the deliverable due date and manage its own work plan. The cross functional team produces a single, unified deliverable. It has its own internal communications (meetings, chats, virtual spaces...)

That's lean project management.

Another opposite to mgt by exception is mgt by detail. If senior managers
intervene in daily project execution, this undermines the PM role.

Management by meeting is the typical opposite of management by exception.
Too much short term detail, low focus on plans and deliverables

Management by exception is powerful when it works. Needs a plan, clear
deliverables and clear delegation up to next major reporting date.

How to manage a project? If you don't manage by exception, other methods
fill the void - management by detail, management by meeting

As we dont store consultant daily rates in Clarity (too confidential), I
must export Open Workbench data to Excel to run my budget. Tedious!

Struggling to get lift off in non-profit programme. Planning new meeting of
key stakeholders. Need buy in. No consensus means low momentum

We automatically generate the weekly status report from the project plan.
Why does this have a perverse effect? Why does the PM lose focus on the
plan?

How to choose Open Workbench views? Use UML use cases to identify the
actors and for each actor, the main uses. Check uses against views. Actors
could be Project Manager or Program Manager or PMO or whatever. Use cases
could be Build WBS, Manage budget, Check Timesheets and so on. It�s best to
limit the use cases to the important ones!

How to choose Open Workbench views? Use UML use cases to identify the
actors and for each actor, the main uses. Check uses against views. Actors
could be �Project Manager� or �Program Manager� or �PMO� or whatever. Use
cases could be �Build WBS�, �Manage budget�, �Check Timesheets� and so on.
It�s best to limit the use cases to the important ones!

In two non-profits, I'm using GroupSpaces for simple project management. One
page per project (a formatted wiki) quickly brings structure. These are
non-profit organisation with zero or few employees, so we must keep things
simple. I use these pages as "seed corn" - in Prince2 terms, I write the
"Project Mandate". The project team then updates the same page (using the
wiki facility) to create a mini-PID; which they subsquently update
periodically to create a rolling highlight report. All on one page. Simple
but very effective. A big thanks to GroupSpaces.

I won friends with Sharepoint today. An aging, clunky tool, it can share
project information across corporate, national and IT frontiers.

Apple’s new iPad is just one deliverable, not the whole project. The new data centre is another, driving long term benefits http://ping.fm/rcMth

A call to order today. A meeting without an agenda? No agenda should mean no
meeting.

How to get fullest use of timesheets so you can track proj&task actuals
vs budget? To motivate externals, check their invoices vs timesheets

If you are using Enterprise PM software, you must resist pirates. Once PMs start using solo MSProject, you lose any chance of consolidation.

How to build a programme forecast budget using actuals from finance plus costed ETC from projects? Get a one month gap. Finance is sooo slow

I plan using Product breakdown structures. As my programme was planned in silos (not by me), I’m now doing a Product recomposition structure

We built the budgets in mandays, then converted to euros. Later, they cut
the budget. So now Im converting a euro cut into a manday cut...

Just reviewed the project budgets, done last year in Excel. Found a huge
error due to wrong formula. That�s why I use enterprise PM software

Just added 12 dependencies on IT projects to my programme roadmap. It
flagged 5 as late. Scheduling software is a tool. Powerpoint is a toy

Yesterday, the utility of a programme roadmap was challenged. Why bother
with scheduling software? Why not use powerpoint? Less hassle