Dear PM Advisor July 30, 2012

Dear PM Advisor,

I'm learning to plan projects and am using a Work Breakdown Structure for the first time. My project is an R&D project that requires us to run many raw materials through the process steps of a steel mill. Can I make ingots of steel one of the deliverables in the WBS?

Peru Steeler

Dear Peru Steeler,

The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a deliverables-based decomposition of project work. Deliverables are of two types:

1. Operating Deliverables are the tangible items you have remaining when the project is over. These enter the ongoining operations environment when the project is over and you can touch them. (New equipment, processes, software, etc.)
2. Project Deliverables are tangible elements of the project that are required during the project duration that won't enter the operating environment (Beta-test versions of software for example)

These deliverables are placed at level two of the WBS and are broken down further into activities.

Where do raw materials fit in the WBS? They may appear in the activities but never in the deliverables. Just like any other project that requires tests to be run, the product being run through the tests is never part of the WBS. Your deliverables may be items like: New Machinery, New Processes, New Procedures, Trained Operators. When you break down these deliverables you may end up with activities like: Develop new procedures, run ingots through machinery, analyze results, gather more materials, process ingots into bars, etc.

So the ingots and any other raw materials may be used in the project and appear as activities in the WBS but they do not belong in level 2 of the WBS: The deliverables.

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send your questions to bfieggen@gmail.com

Olympics Opening Ceremony

After Beijing opened their government pocketbooks to throw an extravaganza four years ago, what could the understated English do to top their opening ceremony? Rather than trying to do so, they simply showed us the contributions made by the English to the rest of the world.

It started out very nice with a pastoral scene looked over by Glastonbury tor.

But shortly after this they showed the Industrial Revolution. Was I the only one who was reminded of Tolkein's Scouring of the Shire? I was horrified to see the pretty countryside ripped up and replaced with smokestacks and molten steel.

Then they went into some silly soap opera about a pair of kids dancing to the music of the sixties through the eighties. I got the connection to British music but maybe you have to be English to care about the kids involved. I did enjoy the scenes shot on the house but the camera rarely lingered there.

Finally they came to the greatest British contribution to the world: Humor. And who better to show it than the masterful Rowan Atkinson playing Mr. Bean in the orchestra? Wish the copyright Nazis would allow me to include the video here but I guess that will have to wait.

Overall this was a successful project that stayed on budget while delighting the audience. Good job Danny Boyle!

On a personal note, I was thrilled because Glastonbury Tor is the setting for the climax of both of my novels.

Free mobile neighborhood library

The Little Free Library on St. Marks Avenue in Prospect Heights aroused the curiosity of Elinor and Evan Bither.

By ERIC P. NEWCOMER

Here's a cute idea, especially with bookstores and libraries being inundated with unwanted books these days. Give them away to neighborhoods for use as book-swaps. Using the 'Leave a book, take a book' process, people swap out books at hundreds of neighborhood book boxes built by volunteers.

According to this article, the box's housing was provided by the National Little Free Library organization, which estimates that there are 2,200 such places, across almost every state and about 30 countries. Each local library pays $25 to register with the group. About 20 percent buy the wood box from the national organization, which can cost a few hundred dollars. The rest, using materials like canoes or ovens, make them for themselves.

Another man is filling New York City phone booths with mobile libraries. Read his story here:

Christopher Gregory/The New York Times

Bicycle Superhighway in Denmark

Jan Grarup for The New York Times

With the delay of New York's bike sharing experiment, it's nice to see progress in other countries. Copenhagen, already boasting some of the highest bicycle commuting in the world has expanded its efforts. One of the organizers asked a very compelling question that all project managers should ask themselves: "How can we do better?"

“We are very good, but we want to be better,” said Brian Hansen, the head of Copenhagen’s traffic planning section.

He and his team saw potential in suburban commuters, most of whom use cars or public transportation to reach the city. “A typical cyclist uses the bicycle within five kilometers,” or about three miles, said Mr. Hansen, whose office keeps a coat rack of ponchos that bicycling employees can borrow in case of rain. “We thought: How do we get people to take longer bicycle rides?”

The answer was to build bike lanes that mimic some of the properties of freeways with right-of-way extended to the cyclists. Read the full article for all the great details of how they encourage bicycle commuting here. Solar-powered lights in forested trails, angled garbage bins, bike 'buses' to share the burden of blocking the wind, chocolates distributed to reward good bicycling habits.

It all makes me sad to have left bike-friendly Oregon for car crazy New Jersey.

Dear PM Advisor July 23, 2012

Dear PM Advisor,

I am running a project that includes members off shore.  The Subject Matter Expert (SME) that was working with the off shore people has left the company so the one of the other SMEs is now responsible for the off-shore work getting completed.  However that SME does not have the confidence in the off-shore that the old SME did and feels he needs to redo all the work the off-shore person does.  How do you get one of your team members to have confidence in the other members?  Or is it a matter of time?  I'm not sure the project can wait until that happens.

Bad Karma in New Jersey

Dear Bad Karma,

This is why team building exercises and co-located project planning sessions are so valuable. You get the team to see each other in action and develop confidence in each other's abilities. Your problem isn't specific to off-shore workers though that helps aggravate things. Because the off-shore team members are not in the meetings to present their work, the SME is able to criticize it without a fair defense. It's your job to defend your team members. I don't believe you can directly get your SME to have confidence in the off-shore workers but you can get him to act as though he had that confidence.

Your SME may have a prejudice against the off-shore team members or he may have a legitimate gripe. Your problem is how to deal with it. Let's start with what not to do:

1. Don't challenge him in the open forum of a team meeting. He will feel attacked and forced to justify his decisions.
2. Don't let it go and hope that time will correct it. Few project problems go away on their own.
3. Don't agree with the SME and have him repeat the off-shore work. Your project budget won't support this.

Instead, take the SME into an empty conference room and ask him to tell you what exactly is wrong with the quality of the work being done by the off-shore folks. Remember that any project is constrained by the following: Cost, Schedule, Scope, Quality, and Risk. Off-shore resources were assigned to a portion of the project with the assumption that they could perform this portion with a lower cost while maintaining the minimum quality standards. Those quality standards should be set on your project or may be found in your corporate policies.

If the SME can show you that the tasks being performed do not come up to those required quality standards, he has a point. Perrhaps the work does need to be revised or even redone. So reassign the work to a competent resource or have the off-shore people beef up the quality of their work before submitting it.

However, since neither you, nor the old SME had a problem with the work in the past, I suspect this is not the case. If the quality is fine, tell the SME that he is adding unnecessary cost to the project budget and perhaps even delaying it by redoing work that was already completed. Show him the negative impact his rework is having on the project's cost and schedule.

If that does not work, remind him that the final arbiter of the project quality is not him but the steering committee or sponsor or whoever is paying for this project, not him. He hay be in the position of determining if the task meets the quality expected when the project was planned but he does not have the authority to add project cost or schedule to bring it up to a higher level of quality that satisfies only him. The implied threat here is that the negative impact you showed him he is having on the project will be shown, by you, to the project sponsor at the next opportunity.

He should back off at this point. Most people are only trying to do the right thing. They forget that they are spending the corporation's money when they try to improve the project they are working on. He's probably a perfectionist at heart and takes this to work. If he doesn't back off, follow through on your threat in the next meeting. Don't throw him under the bus, simply ask the steering committee this question: Should we add x weeks and y thousands of dollars to increase task quality to z or do we maintain the cost and schedule and the original requested quality level? (Any bets on what their answer will be?) Then use their authority to get the SME to trust the off-shore resources.

The last possibility is that the SME has a deep-seated prejudice against the off-shore resources and declares it in your meeting with him. If that happens, it's time to report him to Human Resources to give him a little free education.

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send your questions to bfieggen@gmail.com

Fortieth excerpt from 'Twelve Towers'

He turned around and saw Bleddyn was holding tight to his arm. His boys huddled between a pair of tree trunks with Grainne. He hugged them, assured himself that they were all unharmed and tried to pull them towards town and safety.

Grainne looked at him and with a wry smile said, “We are much safer here. Let’s wait until the knight is further into the woods before we leave.”

“That knight is dangerous. He could come back at any time and we are standing here in the open like a group of frightened partridges.”

“Are you so sure we are in the open, Gwilym? Why don’t you step back and see for yourself?”

Incredulous at her calm, Gwilym released his children’s hands and walked back two steps, watching his family smiling at him. In the near distance he still heard Palomides’ horse, crashing through the undergrowth.  One more step back and his family disappeared, replaced by the huge trunk of the old oak he had run around before he was grabbed by Bleddyn. A step forward and they re-appeared, standing in between two smaller oaks. Blood rushed to his head and chills trickled down his spine as the magic became apparent.

He heard a snort and jumped back to the side of his children as the knight crashed back into the clearing and stood looking in their direction. Then he blundered off into another part of the woods. They huddled together until the sounds of the knight lessened as he moved deeper into the forest.

“What happened?” asked Gwilym of his sons.

“We were playing with Tegid and then Miss Grainne came,” replied Bleddyn.  “She told Tegid to go back to town and took us into the woods. She said we were in danger. I didn’t believe her at first but then I remembered what she did for your leg and for Ma and then I saw the knight coming, so we ran. The knight was right behind us as we ran into the forest and then Miss Grainne pulled us here and said some words and the knight ran past us. I was surprised like you, Da, when I saw the spell."

“Thank you Grainne! I prayed you would hear me. How did you know to come?”

“I was on my way to visit you, as I had promised in Londinium. As I neared the village I received your sending and came to protect your children.”

“My sending?” inquired Gwilym.

“I saw the vision you sent me of your children playing on the beach and the knight coming to threaten them. I ran to the beach and brought your children to the safety of the oak grove.”

Gwilym’s brow furrowed as he took in these facts. He had somehow communicated a vision to Grainne who had cast a protection spell in this forest and saved his children. He had seen magic surrounding Grainne and it made him uncomfortable while thrilling him inside.While grateful for the benefits, he struggled to reconcile it with his religious beliefs.

“Why does that knight pursue you, Gwilym?” she asked.

“He has followed me for many years. I have a book that he wants for his own evil purposes. It may have to do with the prophesy I told you about this spring. He chased me out of many cities in the east: Damascus, Tyre, Cairo and Jerusalem. I have watched the way he treats men and boys who are in his power. He likes to cause pain. I thought I had lost him when I left Jerusalem eleven years ago, but he has found me here. Tarrant is mixed up with him and I know that man does not wish me well.”

Eventually the sounds of the knight faded away as he blundered off into the thickest part of the forest. Grainne waved her arms about with a purpose and Gwilym felt the breeze blowing through the woods again. He hadn’t noticed until then that the protection spell had kept even the wind from their hiding place.

“We must run before he returns!” whispered Gwilym.

"That knight will be lost for a week in those woods. I have taken care of that,” said Grainne.

To read the entire first draft in one shot, click here:

Research Project for fighting fires

Firefighting tactics developed hundreds of years ago may not apply today when furniture is no longer made primarily of wood. Fires that smolder on plastic furniture become suddenly energized when a firefighter smashes a hole in the roof to 'cool' the flames.

But how do you overturn scores of years of experience by following a hunch? You don't. Instead, you carefully light a series of fires under similar conditions and fight them using different techniques.

NIST researchers participated in a series of wind-driven fire experiments in a seven-story building on Governors Island, New York, in February 2008. Photo credit: NIST. 

This series of fires was lit a few weeks ago on Governor's Island under the supervision of NIST. The units were old barracks, providing the uniformity  needed for the test. The testers used the same furniture in each unit and started the fires in the same place with the only variables being where and when to vent the area, when to add water and from which direction, roof or window?

The results are being analyzed and we will hopefully find less firefighters losing their lives using old, unsafe tactics. What a great experiment! Can't wait for the answer.