Originally Published on allPM.com
Problems and Solutions
Problems such as the chronic late delivery, over-budget projects, project-cancellation, poor product quality and runaway projects are common in many settings.For the most part, these problems persist because people do not take the time to evaluate their process and make the changes in it that will resolve the underlying causes
Cause and Effect Analysis
One of the critical techniques in Quality Management is Cause Analysis, e.g., Ishiwara Analysis, to identify the principle and root causes of an issue. Root causes are those that create the conditions from which problems arise. When we identify the root causes of any problem we find process defects. That is, parts of the process being performed are either not working as expected or, while working, are causing problems in other parts of the process.
Process Orientation
In general, a process is a set of steps towards an end; a way of doing something. Having a process orientation means that one is cognizant of one's process and one recognizes that the process may be subject to conscious and unconscious change. The process oriented viewpoint accepts that all activity is occurring as part of a process. Every process exists in a broader context (e.g., a business environment) in which there may multiple processes.
A process may be formally articulated (with or without formal documentation) or not. In any case, there is a definable process made up of a set of activities, performed by people and/or machines, who are usually organized in organization units. The activities each have results and the results tie the activities together and tie the one process to other processes in its environment.
The process is the foundation for performance effectiveness.
Project Management Process
Project management is a process. It is described in the PMI PMBOK®
Lessons Learned
Project management principles include the notion of learning from what we've done. Post-project (or phase) reviews evaluate the way we've performed and what we can do to improve performance on future projects (or phases of the project).
While lessons learned and the post-project review concepts are process oriented improvement approaches, they don't go far enough in providing the full benefits of process orientation.
Moment to Moment Awareness
Moment to moment awareness refers to the ability to continuously reflect upon one's process while performing it. The more people are aware of what they are doing, why they are doing it, how they are doing it and what impact they are having on themselves and their environment, the more they will be able to adjust their performance and behavior to better achieve their objectives.
Continuously Aware
We need to explore what we mean by "continuously reflect" in the definition of moment to moment awareness. Continuous, ultimately, means without any break-- always being cognizant of one's process. Since always being cognizant is not so easy to accomplish, we soften our definition of "continuously" to allow it to mean a series of discrete points in time when we are aware of our process.
Process Review
We take that a step further and recognize that it is useful to have some formal signal or structure for making us aware of our process. The Process Review is such a structure.
For a project team, the process review is like a mini post-project review. It provides a forum for raising and addressing process issues. The issues that might be addressed range from interpersonal relationship and communication effectiveness to the effectiveness of specific performance procedures and tools. As with any review, a checklist/agenda adds significant value.
Note the difference between process reviews and progress reviews. Progress reviews are focused on what tasks are done or not done, what content issues need to be addressed and the identification of problems and their causes.
Process reviews focus in on the way the work is being done and how it might be improved. Process review issues are often identified during progress review, e.g. the identification of the cause of a problem
Individual Process Awareness
As individuals, we can benefit ourselves and our team by maintaining a relatively continuous process awareness. For individuals that means "popping up" from one's immersion in one's work to assess what one is doing, how one is doing it, how it is affecting others, etc. Continuous process awareness is at the heart of the Zen of project management. The following paragraphs discuss continuous awareness and how to practice it.
Continuous Awareness
Continuous process awareness is much less formal than a process review for a work-group. It is a general awareness that can be cultivated to be operating all the time while we are working on our specific content tasks.
Until we cultivate truly continuous awareness, we use some external signal or structure to remind us to look up and make sure we remember where we are, what we're doing, etc. For example, one might formally decide to spend the first or last 10 or 15 minutes of each day to sit back and review one's plan for the next day, week or might to get a sense of the big-picture within which one is working. Alternatively, we might do a mini process review whenever we hit a tough problem "How can I address this by changing the way I'm working?", might be a question we ask.
Having a publicly posted project plan and giving individual performers regular "big-picture" plans and status reports helps to promote a process orientation. It reminds people of the context within which they are working. This enables them to work smarter and to more easily identify inconsistencies and errors.
"Popping up" from the Content
What do we mean by popping up from one's immersion in one's work? It is very common (and useful) to focus down into the content of what one is doing and we do, sometimes, lose track of everything else that is outside of our current frame of reference, which is the current task and its content. To some degree, our concentration has caused us to be caught up in our work and, therefor, blinded to everything else going on around us. It is generally accepted that our performance effectiveness on the task itself increases as we concentrate on the task. If we work in this concentrated "heads down" approach continually, we run the risk of never being able to see our process at all. To be most effective we need the right balance of broad awareness and concentration.
Conclusion
Are you and your work group spending enough time reviewing and improving your process? In the end, we need to spend most of our time performing the process - deep in the content. If we spend little or no time on our process, then we risk perpetuating negative behavior and missing opportunities to make good processes continuously better.
The Zen approach to PM promotes continuous awareness of the way we do what we do. This leads to the wisdom to realize the fundamental relationship between the way we do what we do and the quality of the outcome. We cultivate the humility to recognize that everything we do is subject to improvement. Continuous awareness enables individual growth as well as team performance improvement. This leadsto performance excellence.
