Insights archive

Dichotomies, trichotomies and confusion

03 Jan 2012
Posted by Aled Laugharne

"Shall we go on holiday to Spain or Portugal this year, Dear?" It's often that we naturally bisect or trisect our options or ways of thinking to try and make things easier for ourselves. This might seem to be the best way of coming to a conclusion, but we are often immediately limiting our options to one or other before we can decide on the best solution.

This phenomenon often comes to light when trying to apply various work philosophies to an organisation in a practical manner. Since mass industrialisation, many philosophies have come, gone, and been developed and combined. In the world of Continuous Improvement, I’ve noticed that Lean, Six-Sigma, and to some extent Agile, if not consciously, have subconsciously formed a trichotomy.

The truth is, although theory might dictate that there is some sort of di/trichotomy in place, in practice, very seldom are there situations where one of these theories can be applied in isolation. And indeed, applying one Continuous Improvement philosophy with rigour in a new environment can often lead to comments such as, "Lean (or Six-Sigma, or Agile, or TQM etc.) isn't working for us.", as the programme hasn't been tailored to suit (this assumes that other aspects of Change have been well managed).

So how do you avoid the dichotomy phenomenon and confusion over which philosophy to select when it comes to rolling out a Continuous Improvement programme in your organisation? You could start by talking to a professional services provider like Chaucer, that doesn't have a particular affiliation to one philosophy. This way, a solution can be provided that pragmatically combines ideas from the various schools of thought and can be tailored to your organisation.

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Project Management in a Dynamic Environment

18 Apr 2011
Posted by Richard Huggins

While we all know, love or hate the structure brought to projects by methodologies such as Prince2, it is often the reality that we are not presented with a neatly packaged up project remit, or have time to set up a disciplined regime in order to deliver that perfect project. Instead, we often find ourselves walking into an environment of uncertainty where dead-lines have already been missed and stakeholders are seeing failure looming large.

In such cases, there is no honeymoon period, no period of grace. One is typically swamped with information overload as you walk through the door for the first time. The harassed project sponsor will brain dump all the issues, typically not in order of priority and once finished look at you expectantly and say "well"?

This is a sink or swim moment.

Pragmatically bring structure to the chaos.

The danger here is in trying to be seen as pro-active and getting caught up in the frenzy; dealing with the problems head-on in a linear fashion. Before you know it, you will get mired in the detail and lose objectivity and value to the client.

On the other hand, there is neither appetite nor time for full-on project disciplines such as formal detailed project plans, meeting minutes, lovingly crafted and coloured issues log and risks register and the like. You have to bring structure to the chaos in a fit-for-purpose and pragmatic way by being both flexible and creative.

However quickly the work needs to be done, the basic building blocks in professional project management are still essential to success, they just need to be implemented with a strong dose of common sense, which everyone can buy into.

Here are some alternative deliverables that can be used. Note that over time, once the initial haste is over, it is wise to move the content of the dynamic project tools to standard ones, thus protecting the information and re-establishing the audit trail and a sense of stability.

Chaucer's experienced consulting resources, using pragmatic Chaucer Way - Project Management Process; offer tried and tested, common sense solutions for client's urgent Change and Project Management needs. As such, our consultants are capable of delivering in the most dynamic and testing of environments. Contact us for further information.

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