The warehouse was built, finally!
Phew! I was exhausted. PMI simulation was intense and my team survived. We made the warehouse. At the end, we had some profits too, but we barely scraped through. I capture the simulation experience through a sequential narration as well as learning’s derived from it.
The show was set - 21 teams competing against themselves. The challenge was to implement its plan to build a warehouse. Each team had its plan drawn out and roles defined for each of the six members. We too, were prepared, hopefully with our best laid plans. The syndicate area had been set up appropriately to facilitate the workflow movement and the entire partition wall was covered with white paper and grid lines capturing each week and task in a matrix form. Bright yellow and pink post-it notes with activity codes and invoicing reminders were kept ready last evening.
That was my first learning – when a project team works and one person records everything on a computer, only s/he knows what s/he had done. Is it known to the entire team responsible for project execution? No marks for guessing. A pictorial representation of the project speaks the same language and the Gantt chart on the partition board gave the same answer to each member of a team. Lesson one – use tools that are available to every one to feel involved in the project. A project plan should not be confined to the desktop of the Project Manager.
At 0845 hours, we were all smiling with the feeling “nothing can go wrong, we are prepared well”. And nothing did in the first few weeks. The way the simulation works is that each 15 minute time slot is treated as a week in the period of building a warehouse. From the second week onwards, we submit our decisions on various parameters – start of an activity, allocation of labour strength, purchase of consumables, cabins for labour accommodation, cranes, etc. depending upon what progress report we get. The entire simulation is run through the computer software developed by Cranfield’s Project management department. This software has many algorithms and even within each algorithm, different teams may get different results for same decisions.
To the simulation now – we started on an optimistic note with the first two weeks going on track as per our plan. Needless to mention, we were happy that our plan was working and were also aware that sooner or later we will have to face our first deviation from plan. It came sooner than we thought. One of the tasks was showing a delay in completion. It meant altering our plans for the subsequent weeks. The changes involved revising the labour, cranes and consumables. It also meant revising our cash flow requirements.
Lesson two – if you have done your planning right, you can face as well as adapt to the changed scenarios. No wonder that successful Project managers believe in considerable planning before commencing execution of the project.
Lesson three – Murphy’s law are a reality – if something is expected to change, it will. Projects included.
Soon, we committed our first mistake. We forgot to allocate the crane to the task it was hired for. As a result, the progress report showed no progress on that task. Clearly, it led to an increase of the project completion period by one week. It was not good news at all. Our safety mechanism had failed. Despite having planned for an audit mechanism before submission of action form, we had missed checking our own job.
And soon a surprise – I and our Project Manager Becky – were called away to the lecture room. Like us, two members from each team had been called for and sent on a “cultural exchange” to a different team in another stream. That was a killer move by the Professors – and it is quite realistic too. Isn’t it normal for a project member to get redeployed to another assignment? The exchange experience was phenomenal. From the very start, I had a feeling of being un-welcomed in the new team – after all, you do get passionate about your team and are resistant to change. Like them, I too felt out of place, not having a clue to their strategy or action plan. I was conscious of the fact that it has to be me who has to get into the groove and pick up what this team had chalked out.
And just when Becky and I had been able to develop comfort in this team, the cultural exchange was over. We were sent back to our original teams.
The show was set - 21 teams competing against themselves. The challenge was to implement its plan to build a warehouse. Each team had its plan drawn out and roles defined for each of the six members. We too, were prepared, hopefully with our best laid plans. The syndicate area had been set up appropriately to facilitate the workflow movement and the entire partition wall was covered with white paper and grid lines capturing each week and task in a matrix form. Bright yellow and pink post-it notes with activity codes and invoicing reminders were kept ready last evening.
That was my first learning – when a project team works and one person records everything on a computer, only s/he knows what s/he had done. Is it known to the entire team responsible for project execution? No marks for guessing. A pictorial representation of the project speaks the same language and the Gantt chart on the partition board gave the same answer to each member of a team. Lesson one – use tools that are available to every one to feel involved in the project. A project plan should not be confined to the desktop of the Project Manager.
At 0845 hours, we were all smiling with the feeling “nothing can go wrong, we are prepared well”. And nothing did in the first few weeks. The way the simulation works is that each 15 minute time slot is treated as a week in the period of building a warehouse. From the second week onwards, we submit our decisions on various parameters – start of an activity, allocation of labour strength, purchase of consumables, cabins for labour accommodation, cranes, etc. depending upon what progress report we get. The entire simulation is run through the computer software developed by Cranfield’s Project management department. This software has many algorithms and even within each algorithm, different teams may get different results for same decisions.
To the simulation now – we started on an optimistic note with the first two weeks going on track as per our plan. Needless to mention, we were happy that our plan was working and were also aware that sooner or later we will have to face our first deviation from plan. It came sooner than we thought. One of the tasks was showing a delay in completion. It meant altering our plans for the subsequent weeks. The changes involved revising the labour, cranes and consumables. It also meant revising our cash flow requirements.
Lesson two – if you have done your planning right, you can face as well as adapt to the changed scenarios. No wonder that successful Project managers believe in considerable planning before commencing execution of the project.
Lesson three – Murphy’s law are a reality – if something is expected to change, it will. Projects included.
Soon, we committed our first mistake. We forgot to allocate the crane to the task it was hired for. As a result, the progress report showed no progress on that task. Clearly, it led to an increase of the project completion period by one week. It was not good news at all. Our safety mechanism had failed. Despite having planned for an audit mechanism before submission of action form, we had missed checking our own job.
And soon a surprise – I and our Project Manager Becky – were called away to the lecture room. Like us, two members from each team had been called for and sent on a “cultural exchange” to a different team in another stream. That was a killer move by the Professors – and it is quite realistic too. Isn’t it normal for a project member to get redeployed to another assignment? The exchange experience was phenomenal. From the very start, I had a feeling of being un-welcomed in the new team – after all, you do get passionate about your team and are resistant to change. Like them, I too felt out of place, not having a clue to their strategy or action plan. I was conscious of the fact that it has to be me who has to get into the groove and pick up what this team had chalked out.
And just when Becky and I had been able to develop comfort in this team, the cultural exchange was over. We were sent back to our original teams.
posted by Sandeep Gupta at
8:18 pm
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