Last week I had a chat with
Dale Foong
and
Val Matthews
for the
Project Chatter Podcast
. It was good fun and they let me wander off my nominal topic of using the #CriticalChain method for scheduling and control alongside #ProjectAlliance (#IPD) contracting on #projects. And why you might want to.
One of the benefits of a discussion is it flows wherever the conversation takes you. But it does have the downside that you miss something you wish you had said!
At one point Dale asked me why one of those methods is not well known and common in use. I can’t remember if he asked about PA/IPD or CC.
I gave a bit of an answer, then went off in a different direction!
Reflecting on the discussion later, I was a bit miffed at the weak answer I gave to his important question. So I've put a few thoughts into this post.
What do you think? What have a missed? What have I got wrong?
Why are #CriticalChain and #ProjectAlliance contracting still seen as niche methods and not (as I think they should be) the default scheduling, control and contracting methods?
1: Professionals don't know about them
Professional Bodies & BOK
- Drives much base level training & certification.
- Based more on current practice than better should-do practice.
- BOKs are based on actual practice, so emerging innovations have a problem gaining traction. The PMI removed critical chain from the 6th edition of PMBOK, only to award the Global Project of the Year 2019 to a multi-billion-dollar megaproject that completed in record time for their industry, and who said critical chain played an important role in this.
Academia
- Little research or awareness of the empirical & anecdotal evidence on the methods, so they are ...
- Not included in curricula and/or not taught well.
2: Misunderstood
CC:
- Seen as just an option to CP for scheduling...but not necessarily better. Ignoring the main value added in execution (project controls & progress measurement), and from the early warning of possible issues and synergy with team behaviours – reinforcement of collaboration
- No/low awareness of real-world case study performance, which shows significant and sustained improvements in performance, higher reliability & shorter durations, higher productivity, lower costs & increased project quality
PA:
- Seen as an alternative...but not necessarily better. Often characterised as a 'premium cost option for highly complex projects'. IMHO, PA should be the default project procurement approach for almost all projects.
- If it is costing you more and not a major driver for faster/cheaper/better/reliable performance either you are doing it wrong or there are significant (but one-off) learning costs
- No/low awareness of real world case study performance
Both:
- Stories of poorly-performing cases claimed to be using CC or PA . Without full analysis of the case, so attributing the method as a cause without knowing whether it was. Did the methods cause the poor performance? Were the methods actually used only in part? or wrongly? or only used in name (Eg project said it was using the project alliance method….but what they did had none of the key characteristics of a PA)
3: Misapplied
As well as just getting the basic approach wrong, we might have…
- Use alongside several historical practices that both interfere and reduce benefits.
- Partial use – missing out parts that turn out to be critical success factors.
- Critical chain use on a conventionally contracted project, with many fixed-price contracts used for suppliers/sub-contractors delivering work packages. (This can be made to work, but is not ‘out-of-the-box’ critical chain. Critical chain assumes a collaborative project team with no impediments to shared time (and cost) buffers.?This is not the case with fixed-price contracts)
- Implementing both methods is a change that needs to be managed, and usually requires the removal or suppression of many conventional habits and practices. This might be why some initial uses or pilots are seen as ‘expensive’.?The cost to change and learn new practices might be significant.?But this is a transient cost, and should not be considered integral to either method.
4: Change
- Whilst the methods themselves are easy to understand and use (if anything easier that alternatives)...
- That doesn't mean they are simple to implement. They impact many practices both within the project and within the companies making up the project. As a minimum a project needs isolating from existing procedures & practices.
- For many organisations, shifting to these methods is a major change project, and beyond the paygrade of an individual PM.
5: Resistance
Ego
- Accepting ‘I didn’t know’ and being happy to say ‘You remember what I have been insisting you do for the past 20 years??Forget it.?Now I want you to do this’.
- Are you saying my qualification, skill, experience is worth less that it was?
Engrained habits
- Engrained and systemised methods and workflows, such as construction payment practices, and the way contract forms like NEC embed the schedule (programme) into the contract.
- Opinions of influential and dominant senior managers. Even if the team knows better, they daren’t/won’t say. Or don't want to be ignored & seen as a pain/whinger
- Sunk costs & cost to change (We’ve bought this software and integrated the method into our workflow & procedures)
- Not integrated into model forms of contract.
- From a vested interest.
CC: Large software vendors; Professional bodies; Project controls community.
PA: The dispute resolution industry (What do we do with all the lawyers & mediators if there are orders-of-magnitude fewer disputes?). The contract administration industry (What will all the QSs and contract & commercial managers do when contracts become much easier to administer with almost no loopholes)
- Some trusted advisors who influence owners in their strategic project planning, are employed at the same firms that have a vested commercial interest in the status quo.?And ‘Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas’.
6: Fear
- Of punishment if something goes wrong - Safety in crowds.?‘No one got sacked for buying IBM’
- Of it not working
7: Conspiracy Theory
- This is like the vested interest resistance....but goes beyond passive resistance.
- Deliberate obfuscation & misinformation from vested interests.?Or negligent wrong statements from people with credibility/authority who should/could have researched better, but chose not to.
- For example: Quoting a failed pilot without the context of successes: "Yes, but there is little case history because alliance contracts have not been well tested in the courts” (Ignoring evidence of the much lower rates of disputes, and implying you should prefer a contract approach that has lots of legal disputes): “Yes but it is expensive and needs lots of rare and expensive consultants” (No it doesn’t - they took one specific case and assumed it was representative.?This is like arguing a Ferrari is a slow car having seen one drive very slowly): Implying ‘learning curve’ costs for the first project are integral to the method and will be incurred every time: Highlighting the cost of facilitation that would be valuable to ANY project, is an extra cost of the method (eg team building and dispute resolution).
- Distraction of alternative interventions with high marketing budgets and/or and army of service providers. There is only so much management attention, and alternatives are pushed even though they have lower impact and much longer-term ROI.
- EG: Technology, including data analytics, AI & ML. Why use these powerful technologies on data populated from project using less-efficient methods? We do not need ‘more data’ to identify and implement PA contracting & CC scheduling and control
- EG: Reference Class Forecasting. Not in itself a bad thing to do – organisations with ongoing projects should have access to historical performance data and use this in planning. But it will not drive improvement in actual performance, and there is a risk it can cause a vicious cycle of falling performance.
Dad. Change Agent. Facilitator. Strategist. Linkybrain PM @ Scottish Enterprise & Hon. Executive Fellow Uni@Aberdeen
2 年Mike Healy MBA, FCIPD, FICW thought you might like to share some thoughts on collaboration /alignment etc ....and your recent work on mindset for same would seem particularly useful /relevant
Unlocking sustainable high performance through the synergy of Culture, Customer and Commercial | Creator of The 3Cs Model and HPtE Strategy? | Industrial Relations Expert
2 年Applying TOC TP to the human system to address ego. "Ego" is another word for "Identity”. First, the cloud that must be evaporated ?? Thanks for the tag Steve Harrison
Philosopher and Founder of Uniting The Cults
2 年Hi Ian, I thought to address your main question. It's a great question. > Why are some seemingly good ideas not more common in use? There are many factors but I think there's one major factor that dwarves all the others. Most people view dissenting ideas as bad. They use the word "normal" to refer to good, implying that abnormal is bad. All good ideas were abnormal when they were invented, so this logic makes no sense. The more dissenting the view, the more these people balk at it. In other words, the more extreme an idea is in how it deviates from the "normal", the more these people see it as crazy. Eli Goldratt would tell business managers and executives that they can get a 10X improvement in net profit and people would see that as crazy (because they are accustomed to 10-20% increases). They're not using their reasoning skills to come to this conclusion. Instead it's all emotion based. A parenting philosophy says that we don't have to use force or coercion in order to raise our children well, and most people see that as crazy, because force/coercion is so commonly used in parenting (and other areas of life). They are not using their reasoning skills to come to this conclusion. Instead it's all emotion based.
Theory of Constraints (TOC) Consultant, Owner and CEO at TOC3 Pty. Ltd, Australia, Chair, Board of Directors, TOCICO
2 年Hi Ian, Great Podcast Ian - very strong case for the alliance/collaboration approach. It works much better than the predominant adversarial approach where time/budget slippage triggers internecine wars amongst parties, increased costs, accumulation of losses including trust, reinforcing "variance" as the prime method to profit. Regards Critical Chain: Maybe a missed opportunity to point some of the distinguishing elements between Critical Path and Critical Chain, as to why CC reliably delivers significantly better results. Alliance Contracting together with CC would, in my view, take project management to a whole new level in large scale infrastructure and construction industry.