Sep 2007
Preparation
I find every heuristic comparing
preparation time to total work time unreliable.
Writing isn't always 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. For me, it's often 90% milling around trying to maintain some semblance of self esteem while waiting for inspiration, 1/2 of 1 percent inspiration, and the other 9 1/2 percent mildly pleasing exercise. No sweat at all. Other times it's 100% just doing it. Still other times it's 110% not accomplishing anything at all.
I've been "repainting" my house this summer. No painting involved yet. The house is 100 years old. Last summer, Amy and I painted the west side of the house, and that job took a lot more time than estimated, mostly because we had no idea what was lurking underneath the paint.
Same challenge this summer, where the focus has been the south side. Different weather conditions aged the surface. Different past strategies for dealing with problem spots. Some genuis decided, for instance, to smear silicon caulk on the most weathered boards before the last repainting. The silicon protected the boards from further decay, but also provides a dandy barrier to refinishing the boards to eliminate the feathering and raised grain weathering produced.
I started in June, hopeful that I would just be able to scrape off the few visible bits of loose paint. But there was more loose paint than I’d anticipated. And a lot more securely stuck blobs of silicon than I could have imagined. Here’s how it looked after scraping:
So, I hesitantly accepted that if I wanted a proper paint job, and not just another color wash to cover and compound past mistakes, I’d have to take the surface down to bare wood.
It’s almost October now. When I’ve been home, I’ve managed five or six hours a day on what I’ve grown to lovingly (and sometimes not so enduringly) call The Wall. I’m still an indeterminate distance from finishing the preparation, and I see no relationship between work done and work remaining --- or preparation done and actual painting time to come. I feel autumn’s chill stalking me.
Today it’s raining, but since the roof overhang protects the current preparation spot, I’ll spend the day scraping again. Low and dry.
Dedication can replace prediction. Much of what we engage in these days cannot be estimated and the uncertainty will not be dispatched with clever little heuristics. The vision of the finished work helps fuel continued motivation. Much of the work we do can teach us how to do it if we can accept the role of student and discard the role of wise predictor.
The meta-preparation required to succeed in this work is mental, not physical. It is a dedication test which must be taken and passed over and over again. When the scraper hand swells and the shoulder aches, will you take to the ladder again? When it rains, will you find a convenient distraction? When autumn’s chill morning whispers discouragement, will you still stand and silently prepare, trusting that the time for painting will come?
Writing isn't always 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. For me, it's often 90% milling around trying to maintain some semblance of self esteem while waiting for inspiration, 1/2 of 1 percent inspiration, and the other 9 1/2 percent mildly pleasing exercise. No sweat at all. Other times it's 100% just doing it. Still other times it's 110% not accomplishing anything at all.
I've been "repainting" my house this summer. No painting involved yet. The house is 100 years old. Last summer, Amy and I painted the west side of the house, and that job took a lot more time than estimated, mostly because we had no idea what was lurking underneath the paint.
Same challenge this summer, where the focus has been the south side. Different weather conditions aged the surface. Different past strategies for dealing with problem spots. Some genuis decided, for instance, to smear silicon caulk on the most weathered boards before the last repainting. The silicon protected the boards from further decay, but also provides a dandy barrier to refinishing the boards to eliminate the feathering and raised grain weathering produced.
I started in June, hopeful that I would just be able to scrape off the few visible bits of loose paint. But there was more loose paint than I’d anticipated. And a lot more securely stuck blobs of silicon than I could have imagined. Here’s how it looked after scraping:
So, I hesitantly accepted that if I wanted a proper paint job, and not just another color wash to cover and compound past mistakes, I’d have to take the surface down to bare wood.
It’s almost October now. When I’ve been home, I’ve managed five or six hours a day on what I’ve grown to lovingly (and sometimes not so enduringly) call The Wall. I’m still an indeterminate distance from finishing the preparation, and I see no relationship between work done and work remaining --- or preparation done and actual painting time to come. I feel autumn’s chill stalking me.
Today it’s raining, but since the roof overhang protects the current preparation spot, I’ll spend the day scraping again. Low and dry.
Dedication can replace prediction. Much of what we engage in these days cannot be estimated and the uncertainty will not be dispatched with clever little heuristics. The vision of the finished work helps fuel continued motivation. Much of the work we do can teach us how to do it if we can accept the role of student and discard the role of wise predictor.
The meta-preparation required to succeed in this work is mental, not physical. It is a dedication test which must be taken and passed over and over again. When the scraper hand swells and the shoulder aches, will you take to the ladder again? When it rains, will you find a convenient distraction? When autumn’s chill morning whispers discouragement, will you still stand and silently prepare, trusting that the time for painting will come?
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Designing Projects
Give a team
a project and what will they do? Chances are much better than even
that they will focus upon building the product, not their project.
Some will insist upon a method for construction, but few will
carefully consider the design of their project. Project design will
be lost in the rush to fulfillment which will include gathering
requirements, laying out work steps, mustering team members, and
controlling execution.
The result is often an unmanagable effort supported by little more than hollow assumptions about the present and the future. Speculation masquerades as certainty. The effort proceeds until it encounters an unanticipated reality. Then what? Requirements are reconsidered, plans are redrafted, and the process is more-or-less repeated. Often, six times out of seven, expected results are not achieved.
The obvious strategies for resolving this difficulty include getting better at defining requirements, making better plans, and improving control of execution. Obvious and wrong, but not obviously wrong. Something is missing from the standard project execution strategy. This missing element is project design.
Designing in a project context is not the same as planning. Project planning focuses upon the steps between idea and end product. Project design considers the context within which idea might become product, while questioning both the idea and the product. Rather than gather requirements, project designers questions them.
Project designers questions requirements to find balance between initiating bright idea and resulting legacy effects, looking for useful variations outside the expected patterns of engagement.
We might aspire to satisfy ourselves and our clients by pulling a pre-packaged project design off some shelf, like some ready-to-eat meal. Will this project be lean cuisine or agile fare? Washed down with waterfall or wine? These are the wrong questions.
Fine meals, like fine projects, start with something other than gathering requirements. They start with deliberate design. Of course, the requirements for designing any project conflict and cannot be logically resolved. Perhaps this is why so many projects choose to just get to work, heading off in some direction, any familiar direction, rather than wrestle design dilemmas to ground.
Where does one learn project design? How does one, perhaps trained only in the traditions of project management and execution, stumble upon the principles of project design?
For the last decade or so, some have first encountered the fundamentals of project design by attending our Mastering Projects Workshop. Many enrolled thinking this to be a project management workshop. And I’m afraid that we unintentionally encouraged this misunderstanding. When the workshops started, people caught on that we were considering a different side of projects, one most had never stopped to consider. We were lacking, then, the descriptive term that might have better set expectations. No longer.
We are project designers. If you think design doesn’t make a difference, look around you. Most everything you see bears the marks of design. Some deliberate and fine. Others crude and inadvertant.
We see the same differences when we look at projects. The marks of deliberate, thoughtful design are obvious. The marks of inadvertent design even more so.
Where do you start to learn about designing projects? Attend our up-coming Mastering Projects Workshops in Spokane, Washington or Portland, Oregon. We think that if you engage in project work, and especially if you’ve found this work unsatisfying, this is absolutely essential training. If you and your clients are satisfied with a microwaveable methodology, God Bless You. You could make something better from scratch, at lower cost, with higher satisfaction. Let us show you how.
Here’s the link
Spokane, WA October 23-25, 2007
Portland, OR November 13-15, 2007
The result is often an unmanagable effort supported by little more than hollow assumptions about the present and the future. Speculation masquerades as certainty. The effort proceeds until it encounters an unanticipated reality. Then what? Requirements are reconsidered, plans are redrafted, and the process is more-or-less repeated. Often, six times out of seven, expected results are not achieved.
The obvious strategies for resolving this difficulty include getting better at defining requirements, making better plans, and improving control of execution. Obvious and wrong, but not obviously wrong. Something is missing from the standard project execution strategy. This missing element is project design.
Designing in a project context is not the same as planning. Project planning focuses upon the steps between idea and end product. Project design considers the context within which idea might become product, while questioning both the idea and the product. Rather than gather requirements, project designers questions them.
Project designers questions requirements to find balance between initiating bright idea and resulting legacy effects, looking for useful variations outside the expected patterns of engagement.
We might aspire to satisfy ourselves and our clients by pulling a pre-packaged project design off some shelf, like some ready-to-eat meal. Will this project be lean cuisine or agile fare? Washed down with waterfall or wine? These are the wrong questions.
Fine meals, like fine projects, start with something other than gathering requirements. They start with deliberate design. Of course, the requirements for designing any project conflict and cannot be logically resolved. Perhaps this is why so many projects choose to just get to work, heading off in some direction, any familiar direction, rather than wrestle design dilemmas to ground.
Where does one learn project design? How does one, perhaps trained only in the traditions of project management and execution, stumble upon the principles of project design?
For the last decade or so, some have first encountered the fundamentals of project design by attending our Mastering Projects Workshop. Many enrolled thinking this to be a project management workshop. And I’m afraid that we unintentionally encouraged this misunderstanding. When the workshops started, people caught on that we were considering a different side of projects, one most had never stopped to consider. We were lacking, then, the descriptive term that might have better set expectations. No longer.
We are project designers. If you think design doesn’t make a difference, look around you. Most everything you see bears the marks of design. Some deliberate and fine. Others crude and inadvertant.
We see the same differences when we look at projects. The marks of deliberate, thoughtful design are obvious. The marks of inadvertent design even more so.
Where do you start to learn about designing projects? Attend our up-coming Mastering Projects Workshops in Spokane, Washington or Portland, Oregon. We think that if you engage in project work, and especially if you’ve found this work unsatisfying, this is absolutely essential training. If you and your clients are satisfied with a microwaveable methodology, God Bless You. You could make something better from scratch, at lower cost, with higher satisfaction. Let us show you how.
Here’s the link
Spokane, WA October 23-25, 2007
Portland, OR November 13-15, 2007
