innovation challenges: Low Project Throughput: Simply not getting as many new products to market as you need or want, Poor On-Time Performance: Struggling to predict and commit to timelines that your business can achieve, Minimal Market Impact: Too many resources going to low-impact programs that don’t deliver as promised, Long Time to Market / Slow Speed to Market: Projects taking too long causing you to miss critical windows of opportunity, Not Enough Resources: Constantly hearing that your people are stretched too thin
Without a sustained improvement in productivity—a
change in the status quo—your existing resources won’t ever be able to get it
all done. Unless a solution systematically deals with the root causes, its
impact will be minimal and unsustainable.
Myth #1 Busy Equals Productive: It’s a culture that rewards activity
instead of results. Being busy looks productive, but effort isn’t the same as
achievement. multitasking is the holy grail for this culture. multitasking, it
was at least twice as long before anything finished. Multitasking hurts
quality.
Myth #2 You Finish a Project On-Time by Finishing
Every Task On-Time: project due
date and those deliverable dates are the only dates that matter. Milestone and
deadline thinking for the other tasks in a project just ends up extending
timelines while still exposing the due date to slippage. when people inside
your organization build project plans. They add safety over and above the touch
time estimate and then use those “safe” estimates to assign a required
completion date for each task. The result is that most projects end up planned
at two to three times the duration it would take solely based on the work
effort. The problem is that traditional project management puts safety in each
task and gives each task its own due date. But work expands to fill the time
available. That means the safety in each task encourages procrastination. Student
Syndrome isn’t limited to students. It also isn’t the only type of procrastination;
Perfectionism and Sandbagging are two others you may face. That why experienced
project managers know that delays accumulate while early finishes evaporate.
Myth #3 You Have to Run More Projects to Get More Done: The key is
to realize that most companies don’t get paid for the new products they work
on. They only get paid for the new products that they successfully launch and
start selling. you should only run the number of projects you can carry out at
full speed. Full speed is when adding resources would not help you go any
faster but removing resources would slow execution.
A
high-performance New Product Operating System.
common sense
and common practice aren’t always the same thing. The Three Levers:
- Lever 1 Doing Better Projects is about improving the quality of the opportunities that you put into your new product pipeline.
- Lever 2 Doing Projects Better is about improving your new product execution.
- Lever 3 Increasing Resilience is about the ability to weather any uncertainty that befalls your projects—to bend without breaking.
Creating a high performing OS requires moving:
Strategy from ad hoc to Market Driven, Process and systems from siloed to
collaborative and synchronized, People from busy and stressed to engaged and
productive
The Guided Innovation OS Accelerators
- Create a Firewall to Filter Out Low Impact Projects (Strategy)
- Build Resilient Project Plans with Realistic Timelines (Process)
- Harmonize Task and Role Definitions (People)
- Control Pipeline Entry to Avoid Derailing Projects Already Underway (Process)
- Synchronize Priorities for Crystal Clear Workflow (People)
- Get an Early Warning—While You Can Still Recover (Process)
- Huddle Daily—Even if You Think You Don’t Have Time (People)
- Boost your Pipeline with Better Opportunities (Strategy)
- Structure for Continuous Improvement from the Start (Strategy)
Get your execution and timeline under control, and
budget performance will fall into line.
Accelerator
#1: Create a Firewall to Filter Out Low Impact Projects
“We don’t know how to say no.” The result is that the
top 20% of what you work on delivers 80% of the impact. “Big 5” feasibilities: Commercial,
Technical, Manufacturing, Regulatory, Intellectual Property. The best way to
rank projects is using return per hour for your most constrained resource. the
idea behind full-kitting is that you shouldn’t start a project without having
everything you need to finish—the so-called full-kit. a Full-Kit Review before
the project starts. This review ensures that the cross-functional project team
has all the information they need regarding requirements and specifications and
an appropriate plan to deliver the new product. It also resolves questions or
inconsistencies before the project starts. the team should also identify and
calculate the cost of a day’s delay—a handy bit of information for both force
ranking and execution.
- Pitfall #1 Bureaucratic Governance
- Pitfall #2 Pretend Governance
- Pitfall #3 Static Governance
- Pitfall #4 Thinking You Are Different
- Pitfall #5 Confusing Technology Development with Product Development
Accelerator
#2: Build Resilient Project Plans with Realistic Timelines
Once you’ve decided that a new product opportunity is
consistent with your strategy, is feasible, and meets your financial hurdles,
the next step is to create a robust plan and realistic timeline that your team
and customers can understand and accept. Before any program enters the
execution pipeline, just assemble a cross-functional team to follow these
simple steps—what I call Guided Innovation Planning: Plan for Obstacles, Build
the Project Network, Add Resources & Durations, Identify the Critical Chain,
Crunch the Plan
1. Plan for
Obstacles: "What
are all the possible reasons you could dream of that would cause this project
to fail?"
2. Build the
Project Network: Instead of
a task list, your cross-functional project team needs to build a project
network that shows the relationships between tasks. the team starts by planning
in reverse. Beginning with the final deliverable and then using Post-its on a
large whiteboard or wall, they work back task-by-task through all of the
identified obstacles—one Post-it per task. With each, they ask, “And what needs
to happen before this task can start?” or, “What do we need to do to get around
this obstacle so this task can be successful?”
3. Determine
Task Durations: Critical
Chain Project Management. touch times should be half the length of 90%
probability estimates. then put half of the time removed from the critical
chain tasks back as a shared buffer at the end of the project.
4. Identify
the Critical Chain: The
critical chain is your project’s constraint—the longest sequence of tasks
without any planned multi-tasking.
5. Crunch the Plan: That means that the only way to crunch or shorten the
project duration is to scrub the critical chain looking for tasks that could
run in parallel without multi-tasking.
- Pitfall #1 Planning in a Vacuum
- Pitfall #2 Buffer Deniers
- Pitfall #3 Sizing Tasks to Meet the Due Date
- Pitfall #4 No Peer Review
- Pitfall #5 Micro or Macro-Managing Tasks
- Pitfall #6 Waiting Tasks ---- Check for GuidedInnovation.com/Software-Choices
Accelerator
#3: Harmonize Task and Role Definitions
Engines of Disharmony: Not understanding how you or others
should be contributing to the company’s success, Conflicts about the work to be
done, Work or work rules that are no longer necessary but still exist due to
inertia, Gaps between responsibility and authority
- Pitfall #1 Inflexibility in Execution
- Pitfall #2 Gaps in Preparation and Approval
Accelerator
#4: Control Pipeline Entry to Maximize Speed and Resilience
Once you
reach your bandwidth, every extra project you add makes the others take longer
and delays cash flow and its compound effects. he impact is relatively mild
until you near 70-80%. Beyond that, waiting time becomes unstable and highly
vulnerable to variation. So operating any resource near full capacity creates
instability that reduces both throughput and predictability. The solution is to
monitor the capacity utilization and then limit new project entry to keep your
loading in a target range below 80%. Why four and not five? Because you don’t
want to exceed 80% of capacity and stray into that unstable zone. Unfortunately,
the virtual drum has two drawbacks. First, bandwidth can be very fluid and
difficult to measure—especially if your projects differ significantly in size
or have wide swings in resource utilization within a project. Additionally, the
virtual drum can be hard to sustain with people continually pushing for a
higher WIP limit to accommodate their projects. A better approach is a dynamic
one where your project planning and execution software does the work of
monitoring your bandwidth and its projected utilization.
- Pitfall #1 Not Taking Bandwidth Seriously
- Pitfall #2 Fear of Saying No or Not Now
Accelerator
#5: Synchronize Priorities for Crystal Clear Workflow
That means
you must synchronize priorities across the organization so that everyone knows
what they should be doing today: What should I be working on now? What should I
work on next? These sound like simple questions—don’t they? But in most
companies, the answer is anything but crystal clear and stable. Instead, it
depends on who you ask. consider splitting priorities into two parts. Strategic
priorities determine the next project to come off the backlog. But operational
priorities need the clarity of a relay race handoff, so the project that is
most at risk of finishing late gets priority access to resources–especially if
the goal is an on-time finish. prioritize the resources based on the risk of
finishing late. Priority is not a reward for burning more buffer. It’s merely a
strategy to increase new product throughput by bringing more projects in
on-time. our projects, the people working on them need only make one daily
update in your project management system. they simply provide their best
estimate of the amount of work remaining for their task. The key is daily
reporting based on the latest information available. One exception is longer
waiting tasks, such as ordering tooling or waiting for an outside resource to
complete market research. When someone marks a task as zero days remaining, it
is complete according to the task definition. Then it’s time for them to look
in their workflow report for the next available task. If there is more than
one, they follow execution priority rules to make sure they work on the one
most at risk of finishing late.
- Pitfall #1 Ignoring Priorities
- Pitfall #2 Inflexible Priorities
Accelerator #6: Get an Early Warning — While You Can
Still Recover
- Pitfall #1 Customer Delays
- Pitfall #2 Scope Creep
Accelerator
#7: Huddle Daily Even if You Think You Don’t Have Time
your people need to meet and communicate frequently. Communication
and a sense of urgency are essential to avoiding crises in execution. striking
at the root of this problem only requires a simple fifteen-minute
cross-functional meeting. It’s not just any meeting, but a unique daily team
huddle focused on visualizing the progress each project has made and what is
required to maintain the flow.
The FlowView™ Board: During the daily standup, your teams
gather in their work areas in front of a wall-sized board representing the flow
and current state of every project moving through your system. The FlowView
board is a wall-size magnetic whiteboard. It has vertical lanes representing
the flow of work and horizontal swim lanes for different workstreams that can
go on in parallel. For each project underway, you create a card and place it on
the FlowView board. You may need more than one card per project, depending on
the number of activities you can run in parallel. It’s good practice to label
each card with the project identifier and other useful reference information
such as the project due date or the customer name. You should also include
additional items such as status flags and the current task manager’s name. As
resources become available, you pull the cards from a Ready column into a Doing
column. Then you move completed cards into a Done column. That becomes a Ready
column for the next activity. With the board prominently displayed in the work
area, the team and anyone inside the company can easily see where each project
is and whether it’s blocked. There are many software tools available to create
and manage boards like this. My recommendations are available at: GuidedInnovation.com/Software-Choices
The standup huddle occurs in front of the FlowView board and is limited
to only 15 minutes. So before the meeting, the leader reviews the buffer status
charts to prioritize the projects most in need of attention. That way, during
the session, they can focus on the exceptions. your priority is the projects at
risk. One of the benefits of sizing tasks between 1-3 days, as covered earlier,
is that it helps create both ownership and energy. As the team sees work
regularly moving across the board, there’s a natural desire to want to be part
of the progress. You might even see a little friendly competition and peer
pressure to get more done.
- Pitfall #1 Problem Solving: you can’t let them become problem-solving or strategy meetings. Problem-solving happens after the standup when the project leader and a sub-team meet to plan ways around the obstacle and ways to recover buffer so they can still deliver on time.
- Pitfall #2 Non-Escalation: There are many reasons a project task can become blocked—technical problems, supplier problems, customer changes, and approvals of all sorts. you must have a process that freezes blocked projects and a manager responsible for seeing that they are rapidly escalated and resolved. People also need to know that non-escalation of an issue to save face is not acceptable. Not only is escalation expected, but there are also no reprisals for raising issues of any sort.
Accelerator
#8: Boost Your Pipeline with Better Opportunities
getting
execution under control first frees up some of the resource capacity you need
to do this kind of work. That means you can start to leverage your execution
capabilities on Doing Better Projects
A Field
Guide for Finding Unmet Needs
1. Never
Enter the Jungle Unprepared: Cross-functional teams, need to develop an interview
guide and determine what role each will play in the interview (lead, scribe,
clarifier, observer, etc.)
2. Focus on
Unmet Needs: finding
problems that you might later be able to solve and identifying the value
created by doing so.
3. Discover
Their Limitations: What
limitations, restrictions, or problems are apparent in the customer’s life–be
that in their workplace or home? It’s best if you can observe people at
work—continually asking them questions to make the assumptions around their
practices explicit.
4. Dig to
Get Below the Surface: Continue asking why until you get to the root cause. Then continue to go
deeper to find elements of the problem where you might eventually develop a
profitable solution.
5. Look
Through a Customer Value Lens™ : New product success in industrial and technology
markets depends on helping customers sell more, spend less, or free up working
capital. customers are only listening to station WIFM—What’s In it For Me. So
you need a framework that works from the outside-in—what I call the Customer
Value Lens:
6. Keep Them Talking: The detailed type of information
mentioned above is hard to get unless the customer feels you need it to
determine if you can develop a win-win solution—develop being the operative
word. Any premature solution discussion shuts down the information flow because
they suspect you’re trying to gather information to put a price tag on the
solution. For that reason, conduct these visits without a salesperson if you
can. These are marketing visits, not sales visits,
- Pitfall #1 Missing What They Are Saying: You must listen to what the customer is saying, but sometimes it’s just as important to pay attention to how they say it or even the body language they exhibit. It requires impeccable listening skills and excellent note-taking. It’s critical to use what you’ve learned to improve future sessions.
- Pitfall #2 Ignoring Resistance: While you can help remove a limitation, the market has lived with that limitation for some time now. That means there are norms, policies, regulations, sales channels, and even institutions that have enabled companies to work around those constraints with alternative approaches. The status quo can create formidable resistance. it’s an important step to consider what kind of resistance you might face and how you can reduce that friction to make your solution easier to adopt.
- Pitfall #3 Getting Ahead of Yourself: It’s important to note that this strategy is only for advanced users. In fact, it’s challenging to get here without first putting the other strategy elements solidly in place.
Accelerator
#9: Structure for Continuous Improvement from the Start
Change is hard enough without unrealistic
expectations. the longer it takes to see positive results and benefits, the
lower the chances are that the change will be sustainable.
A More Agile
Approach to Change Management
Good enough
for a passing grade. The first step is to establish a directional goal for the
performance you want to achieve longer-term. Then you can determine what
metrics you need and set an intermediate target for improvement—where you would
like to be in six to twelve months. Often, managers start out wanting to set
ambitious targets along too many dimensions, including on-time performance, new
product throughput, and time to market. But it’s essential to pick one of these
as your guiding light. Choose that guiding goal based on a diagnosis of what is
constraining your growth. Then once you’ve rolled out Version 1 and have it up
and running with a passing grade, you can begin managing for regular and
continuous improvement. Each improved version should focus on bringing your
performance up another grade level. As part of continuous improvement, it’s
critical to evaluate the lessons learned during each major project—including
each phase in implementing these changes. A key benefit of using CCPM software
is that the automation makes many of the strategies already covered much easier
to implement and sustain. The real value of AAR’s and the Dashboard is in
putting what you learn to use. Another element of continuous improvement is
aligning your organizational structure and the goals, objectives, and other
parts of your performance management systems with the transformation you are
leading. You also need to evaluate whether your organizational structure might
be creating conflicting goals and incentives. This often happens in matrix
organizations if metrics don’t link functional contribution to top-level
business goals.
- Pitfall #1 Winging It: Structuring for continuous improvement isn’t the same as trial and error. So before beginning the change process, you need to identify proven building blocks that will take you to a better place than where you are today.
- Pitfall #2 Not Casting a Wider Net: True continuous improvement involves everyone in the enterprise, and people want to know how they can contribute.
- Pitfall #3 Not Celebrating Enough: people love to be part of a winning team. So communicate and celebrate early and on-time finishes.
- Pitfall #4 The Rearview Mirror Problem: the competitors in your rearview mirror are closer than they appear.
- Pitfall #5 Failing to Leverage: Imagine for a moment that you have overcome the status quo and transformed your new product innovation operating system. You can now develop more new products in less time and with a higher level of predictability than any of your competitors.
No Silver
Bullets
These
results beg the question, why hasn’t every company moved in this direction?
Unfortunately, too many managers are looking for a
silver bullet. And while the accelerators shared here can create dramatic
improvements, they still require significant organizational change and
transformation. your company’s DNA. As harmful as they can be, conventional
project and resource management practices have rooted themselves in that DNA;
it takes a concerted effort to eradicate those roots. That’s the status quo at
work, especially if your changes are only hacking at the branches. Significant
and sustained improvement requires a solution that strikes directly at the
roots of the problem. But it also requires a proven roadmap for change. And
that’s exactly what I designed the Guided Innovation Operating System to be.
Obstacles
You Should Expect
- Pitfall #1 Being Afraid to Lead Change: The key here is leadership. Change is, after all, a leadership activity. And you can still choose to lead even if you don’t have the final decision. It’s about turning that reflection around and owning the problem. Taking a stand for what you know is best for the company and ultimately for everyone within. It’s time to get out ahead of the issues and lead your organization to buy into a better way.
- Pitfall #2 Getting Buy-In Backward: High influence leaders learn to overcome this by leading people to the change instead of leading with the change. They know that people aren’t naturally resistant to change—only to change that makes them feel insecure or that they think is being pushed with a hidden agenda. You can’t win the hearts and minds necessary to move beyond the status quo when you lead with the solution.
- Pitfall #3 Failing to Quantify the Problem:
- Pitfall #4 Going It Alone: Innovation leaders are fast learners. They often feel, “Once I’ve read the book, I know what to do.” But as the saying goes, “The Map is Not the Territory.” And making sustainable changes within organizations of any size is unquestionably complex. When results matter, there’s no substitute for working directly together with an experienced advisor.
