Thomas James has a question that I’ve often wondered about as well:
I have to wonder, has every project I have ever worked on with LM (X-33, VentureStar, ET, CEV/Orion, among others) started from scratch with everything from numbering schemes to release processes to configuration management to data vaulting to drawing formats and standards to basic skill mix and team structures? You’d think that after so many decades that a lot of this stuff would have become routine by now — revised periodically as new technology becomes available, of course, but not built anew every time.
A counter argument to this — and one I used frequently when confronted with the All-Encompassing Michoud Excuse for Not Improving Processes: “That’s the way ET does it” — is that one ought to take advantage of the start of a new program to incorporate the lessons learned from other programs, thereby continuously improving the way business is done. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a middle ground between status quo and Year Zero when it comes to these things.
Every time we used to do a proposal at Rockwell/Boeing, and have to describe the systems engineering process, it seemed like we had to come with a new process flow description and graphic, as though we’d never done this before, instead of taking an existing one and tweaking it, and this applied all across the board–in risk mitigation and management, trade analyses, etc.
If I were running one of these multi-billion dollar corporations, I’d put someone in charge of boilerplate and legacy, so that there was a one-stop shop of best practices and material for use in both proposing and managing programs. Maybe they have one, and I was always unaware of it, but if that’s the case, that’s a big problem as well.
“it seemed like we had to come with a new process flow description and graphic, as though we’d never done this before, instead of taking an existing one and tweaking it, and this applied all across the board–in risk mitigation and management, trade analyses, etc.”
I saw this on more than just aerospace projects. It is as if management needs to be dazzled with some new method, some new eye-catching process. And they get irate if you don’t do it.
I was working for an insurance company, and we were writing a massive Administrative-Services-Only project. As we were under insane deadlines, I began using and retweaking code and processes that we had already developed. The Project Manager, and the Senior VP for the whole project saw my scribbles on a white board, and confronted me about it. After a verbal tongue-lashing about my methodology, and the Project Manager erasing the white board, they stormed off muttering to themselves about “…the people we have working for us. No wonder we’re behind…”
I learned from this. I changed the freaking labels on the documents, and broke out a few more boxes on the chart so it looked different. I actually caught the Project Manager comparing one process chart to another to see if I had “fallen into my old bad habits”. I held my temper, but it took both hands and counting to 10 in several languages.
I mentioned it to a friend from Boeing with whom I did horseback riding with, and he related a couple of similar incidents in his line of work.
“Are those TPS reports finished yet?”
I get so sick of this stuff. A little background: in six years with a large hitech company I have reported to 5 different people. (Not just me, the whole group I’m in.) And it’s not just the line managers that come and go, the whole rotten management structure of the “BU” is constantly changing — the “reorgs” seem endless.
Just today our group had a meeting with the yet another new head of whatever new branch we’re newly part of. This guy, who is my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss, walked in with the same blue shirt, open at the neck, nice haircut, knowing look, and with the same raft of non-answers to the same tired old questions.
But one thing I’ve noticed about these guys is that they always have some new formalization of some old wrinkle of what managers everywhere do. This guy’s was “Value Chain Mapping Analysis.” Claimed it came out of MIT. I guess you get bonus points for impressive titles and even more impressive sources. Sometimes I think the whole bailiwick of mid-level managers is to formalize the process of figuring out that they have no idea what they are doing.
Oh, but hey, as this guy himself noted, at least he has the “benefit of not knowing our history.” Ya. I’m not kidding. We sure wouldn’t want actual knowledge and experience to interfere with his management processes, now woould we?
(Rand, sorry for the rant, but I think this is at least in the spirit of your post.)
The fundamental problem is the one of directing the efforts of large numbers of people to a single common purpose. Back in the day, did they have “pyramid charts” in Ancient Egypt? So how did they manage construction of the pyramids and other monuments? Did they have these dude’s were good with flip-books of papyrus or stone tablets?
The military has this problem, or at least the Western-style 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Generation Warfare military. You have the PFC’s or Lance Corporals at the pointy end of the stick, and they you have NCO’s yelling at them to get “your s**t on” when the enemy starts in with a morter attack, you have the Lieutenant on the radio, a whole layer of middle management Captains and Majors, and then you have Bird Colonels in a bunker somewhere, and you get the idea.
Corporate America borrows heavily from the military, and the military adapts to fads, fashions, and methods from Corporate America.
General David Petraeus and his soldiers and officers are doing a fantastic job in Iraq, in my opinion, for which I am grateful, but the good General has his Anaconda Vu-Graphs or Power Point slides, and a lot of this sound like this touchy-feely personal-psychology-influenced management school stuff that my engineering mind tries to avoid.
There must be something to it because the strategy in Iraq has changed in what seems a positive direction (OK, OK, don’t lay on the snarky trolls about how grim it is in Iraq and I am wearing rose colored glasses. There are a lot of unresolved questions, but the situation is nothing like a year or two years ago).
Years ago, Ralph Peters (of “In Search of Excellence” fame) wrote a column noting the simultaneous decline of American industry with the rise in the number of MBA graduates. His point was that MBA grads were taught to look to the next quarterly statement instead of taking a longer view of their industry. Personally, I think Peters was right.
Managers should never be allowed to read technical magazines lest they fall for the latest fad de jour.
I think you mean Tom Peters. Ralph Peters is someone else…
Product Lifecycle Management SW may be the solution. It’s Web 2.0/3.0 for engineering. Some companies like SpaceX and SS/L are dipping in.
http://www.cimdata.com
http://www.ptcuser.org/2008/
http://event.plmworld.org/index_2008.php
http://www.coe.org/EventsEducation/IndustryWorkshops/AerospaceDefenseWorkshop/tabid/216/Default.aspx
PMOs are supposed to fix this. Though I think the fix to the situation recounted by Bruce B would probably involve bullets.
Can anyone who has worked in both publicly- and privately-funded organizations comment on the relative admixture of stupidity involved? (My impression of the private sector, where I have spent essentially my entire career, is that its stupidity is kept in check only by 1] competition and 2] inability to print money.)
The Gantt chart was developed by Henry Gantt who focused his work on the construction of Military ships. The Military continued to incorporate the use of these types of charts and is largely responsible for what we know to day as “Project Management”.
There was a section I recently covered about how to develop Word Breakdown Structures for a Gantt chart and one talked specifically about how gov’t contractors do this. They use historical breakdown structures to develop the charts. In other words they generally tend to borrow the WBS’s from previous projects that were successfully completed.
However, this does not preclude a contractor from instantly marking a WBS complete if they are borrowing a deliverable directly from a previous project. When the contract was penned for the current project it always states somewhere in there that all the various tasks have to be re-worked to prove that they fit within the current project planning goals. In other words, the project managers are reading a mystery novel that they already know the ending to. But they still have to provide progress reports that prove, “I read chapters 6-12 this week.”
If anything the project managers like this because it gives them a easy helping of metrics that report well they are on track, on time, and in budget. This gives them some wiggle room between the critical milestones so they can report about how great things are going on the xyz tasks and keep delaying on more troublesome areas, i.e. Ares I POGO issues.
It is all too common know days for corporations to adopt this know project management organization structure that involves at least 5 project managers in one business unit. These project managers probably have a Project planner overseeing the strategic needs of the various projects. The projects then have the sponsors in the form of directors and VP’s and they of course get their marching orders from the President of the company. As you imagine micromanagement is prevalent in modern corporations.
Don’t know why “know” kept popping in there instead of now and new. NEED COFFEE!!!
Josh, I almost spewed MY coffee all over my screen when I saw anonymous’ links to something (anything) related to PTC as the solution to such problems.
We have been attempting to implement Windchill 8 on Orion since (no lie) October of 2005. And it’s still not working beyond the basic fileserver functions. Hence much of the reinventing of the wheel in the form of “in the meantime” processes. This with a product that was supposed to be ready “out of the box”.
Jay Manifold wrote:
“Can anyone who has worked in both publicly- and privately-funded organizations comment on the relative admixture of stupidity involved? (My impression of the private sector, where I have spent essentially my entire career, is that its stupidity is kept in check only by 1] competition and 2] inability to print money.)”
My limited experience is that it’s about equally high and close to 100% if you’re unlucky. I’ve been in both private and public/government funded companies that seriously flirted with 100% (one of each. and both large near-monopolies locally). Luckily for my own sanity I also have experiences in both categories with other companies/organizations that were close to about 10% (pretty stellar in my opinion as anything below that seems utopian). Some of it begs disbelief and I’ve learned from experience not to even mention it with names of the companies included unless there’s a third party present who’ll back it up independently (not going to happen here since these are Norwegian and Nordic companies that you’re unlikely to have ever heard of, one of them even if you’re Norwegian except if you’re in big finance as it’s a service provider for them).
Overall government or public funding tends to do worse but this could be explained by the differences in what they’re tasked to do.
However I don’t think stupidity is being kept in check by competition, sometimes if there’s a lot of competition it holds true, but more often it only spreads the stupidity. And I’ve seen companies run into the ground or barely surviving on account of inflated profit motives or (in the government world) efficiency motives (among many examples this applies to both the big 100% stupidity companies who only survive on their established market dominance while they’re weakened by profit/efficiency delusions).
Project Management in general is something that I’ve seen thrown in as filler in almost completely unrelated education (and that explains a hell of a lot doesn’t it? One only needs to add slimeballs to that and you get middle management stereotypes).
Did I mention I’m a hater of “business books”*? So much tripe (or close to it) that’s far too often taken as gospel. Uncommon sense, a fair amount of basic intelligence, and a realization that most leaders serve their subordinates (as well as their own bosses be it a person or owners) and one beats all that in my opinion.
* Let’s add “pedagogy books” to that, and even worse the ones who try to be both.
Jay Manifold wrote:
“Can anyone who has worked in both publicly- and privately-funded organizations comment on the relative admixture of stupidity involved? (My impression of the private sector, where I have spent essentially my entire career, is that its stupidity is kept in check only by 1] competition and 2] inability to print money.)”
My limited experience is that it’s about equally high and close to 100% if you’re unlucky. I’ve been in both private and public/government funded companies (one of each) that have seriously flirted with 100%. Luckily I also have experiences in both that were close to about 10% (pretty stellar in mt opinion as anything below that is pretty utopian) so it’s not all bad.
Overall government or public funding tends to do worse but this could be explained by differences in what they’re tasked to do.
However I don’t think stupidity is being kept in check by competition, sometimes if there’s a lot of competition it holds true, but more often it only spreads the stupidity. And I’ve seen plenty of companies run into the ground or barely surviving on account of inflated profit motives or (in the government world) efficiency motives.
There are good MBAs out there but there are a lot more worse (or even false) ones. Project Management in general is something that I’ve seen thrown in as filler in almost completely unrelated education (and that explains a hell of a lot).
Did I mention I’m a hater of “business books”? So much tripe (or close to it) that’s taken as gospel. If I see someone having a small collection of such titles I usually know all I need to know about the person. Uncommon sense, a fair amount of basic intelligence, and a realization that leaders serve their subordinates and you’ll beat all that in my opinion.
Oops posted an earlier version of my comment by mistake, please disregard the second post (the first one is the final one).