Pilot, Rollout, and Assess (Steps 5,6 and 7 of Adaptive Work Managment

Steps 5 and 6. Pilot and Roll Out

B.M.G. ?identified seven projects to use as pilots for the new project management system. Some of these projects were new, while others were already in progress. The core team managed each of these projects using the new project management system, tuning the new processes and toolkit as they received feedback from the pilots.

B.M.G. ?did a wider rollout to encompass more projects and people once the pilots were completed. The rollout used several methods.

1.??????An instructor delivered focused training through two-day workshops. B.M.G. ?trained 74 engineering personnel. People from other departments, as diverse as human resources and finance, liked what they saw and requested their own additional training. This training had two purposes.

• General education about Work Management brought everyone to a minimum level of common language and an understanding of fundamental techniques.
• Specific training taught how to use the B.M.G. ?processes and toolkit.

2.??????A Work Management expert coached project leader, project team members, and managers on real projects.

3.??????The toolkit was posted on B.M.G. 's intranet, allowing "self-service" usage.

4.??????Executive sponsors stepped up their level of support by raising expectations and accountability for using the new B.M.G. ?process and tools.

Step 7. Assess Results

Lessons Learned

We learned eight major takeaways during implementation.

Work management will always be secondary.?B.M.G. 's silicon factories mix project-based work with the support of 24x7 mission-critical operations. Operations always trump maintenance in this environment. Work management must fit in the white spaces around ongoing operations. Brown says, "When you have a mix of operational and project management responsibilities, you have someone serving two masters. Both sides (operations and project management) often underestimate the role and challenges of the other".

Start by building a common language.?People can only work together to improve project management practices once they have a way to talk about it. This includes clearly defining key process roles. At the beginning of this initiative, B.M.G. ?did not even have a shared understanding of the difference between maintenance planning and scheduling.

Contextualize work management.?Base solutions on the best practices of work management but customize the techniques and language to fit the specific goals of the unique organization. There are no turnkey solutions. Since B.M.G. ?was an organization with low process management maturity and a primary focus on operations, this meant favoring simple, flexible, and low-overhead techniques above technical correctness.

Pick your battles carefully.?Concentrate efforts on a few key areas that will have big payback. Newcomers can only absorb a fraction of them. It is much better to have people deeply understand a few techniques than it is to give them surface knowledge of many. Therefore, B.M.G. ?focused on a few work management techniques that would benefit the business most.

Everything is about organizational change.?Initiatives like B.M.G. 's are only secondarily about work management. The consultant and sponsor must think like change management champions and use excellent change management techniques. John Kotter's work is a good place to start. Here are some change tips that were important to us.

Ensure the solution improves everyone's job so it has to stay power. Otherwise, it is just another management fad.

Use participative design and implementation techniques to get widespread buy-in and involvement. Find ways to get users' fingerprints all over the solution so they have a sense of ownership.

Design for quick wins. Get at least some immediate and highly visible victories so the organization can maintain interest.

Organizational change takes more time, effort, and buy-in than you expect.

The system is more important than its parts.?The designers of the project management process must take a systems view, not just create "point" tools and techniques.

Technology comes last.?Spend most of the design time deciding how projects' people, processes, and organizational aspects will work. Software and technology play a supporting role and come later. Bringing specific software in too early threatens to shift focus to the software's capabilities rather than on how to solve the users' problems.

Strong and long-lasting executive sponsorship is required.?You cannot succeed without it. B.M.G. 's executive sponsors were persistent, led by example, and employed both gentle coaching and firm accountability.

Assessment of Results

The initiative took about 15 months from the beginning of step one (validation of the problem) to the completion of step six (rollout). About a year after the rollout was complete, B.M.G. 's executive sponsor assessed progress and reported the following results:

Knowledge of work management techniques is widespread and best practices are being used.

More jobs and projects are successful. Over a two-year period, delayed work was reduced by about 45%, and on-time completions nearly doubled.

Many projects now have B.M.G. ?charters that clearly define the project's business value and expected deliverables.

The status of work is more visible to supervisors and management. Progress reports are available for most jobs and projects.

Communication between maintenance and with the rest of the business has improved because of simplified progress reports and communication forums.

Other U.S. groups have gotten involved, and interest has grown internationally.

End Point

B.M.G. ?competes in a fast-moving, cost-sensitive, global line of business. It will stay competitive only as long as it frequently upgrades the semiconductor technology capabilities it can offer to its customers while simultaneously improving quality and reducing costs. Successful, Adaptive Planning Management is a business imperative because it is the engine B.M.G. ?uses to design and implement these vital fab upgrades and processing improvements.

B.M.G. ?tackled this challenge by using a seven-step approach to determine the root causes of systemic jobs and project failures, design appropriate solutions for their operations-oriented environment, and then widely roll out a new work management system.

Two factors significantly shaped this initiative. First, B.M.G. 's fab operations run 24x7, so operations will always trump PMs and work requests. Second, jobs were run ad hoc, and the organization's project management maturity was at the lowest level of Kerzner's scale. Both of these factors drove the need for simplicity and low overhead.

The focus throughout the project was on collaboratively building a system of simple but effective planning and scheduling techniques. A key goal was to give a widespread sense of ownership to the ultimate users of the system – the maintenance staff, team members, and the technical management team.

The initiative was successful, with on-time jobs nearly doubling over a two-year period. We learned that even proven work management techniques must be contextualized, sometimes almost beyond the point of recognition, to fit the specific environment where they are used. A systems perspective and participative design techniques are essential for building long-term adoption.