Will IPD and ConsensusDOCS Change Bad Behavior?

A recent discussion on LinkedIn centered on the tendency of Clients (Owners) and General Contractors to hold payments for completed work for as long as they can. This is especially hurtful for smaller companies.

Will the use of new forms of agreement such as the Integrated Project Delivery Agreements by the AIA and ConsensusDOCS change this trend? We'll see.

It's about people and trust - regardless of the form of contract that we work under on construction Projects.

Mind Mapping for Customer Relationships

Projects have Customers. Internal. External. Someone needs and wants the output that our Project will produce. Look at how one company is using mind maps to improve their relationships with their customers.

Scheduling - Purists vs Randoms - Obvious Lessons

In ProjectWorld, scheduling can create massive controversy. Much of the debate is between "Scheduling Purists" and the opposite - I'll call them "Random Purists".

Scheduling Purists often feel that whatever is generated on paper (or on screen) is what will happen, at a certain time, and in the exact required sequence. They are often disappointed and amazed when the actual execution of the Project happens in some other order of events or when a specific task goes (apparently) unnoticed long after its scheduled start date.

The eXtreme version of the Random category is just the opposite. They want to do what they want to do when they want to do it and it will "take as long as it takes". Or, perhaps when they are "trying to be part of the team", they don't say it THAT way, but they generally ignore what's planned since they believe a different sequence or set of activities is best.

Whenever these two are together on a project, they will obviously create friction. Friction can be good, but this usually creates friction so hot that it will burn through a Project and leave a scar.

So, is one of them right and the other wrong? Not really.

A few points from this two-sides-of-the-coin extreme are these :

1. One person (or one small group) shouldn't decide what will be done and when. As many participants as possible should be involved in the process.
2. In spite of best efforts at the beginning to define what will happen when, something will likely change. That statement is not a way out for the Randoms to throw away the schedule and do what they want. Think of it like this - we say what we plan to do today, in the next hour, with some certainty. The shorter the time-frame, the better the certainty.  However, trying to say with certainty what we will do in 2 months at 8:00AM or in 14 months is reaching, to put it mildly.
3. Plans and schedules have to be somewhat flexible and should be expected to change as we move further away from "Start Here".
4. Items 1-3 are not excuses to throw it all in the trash. The Customer always has a desired timeline for completion of the work. The old sayings "You can't hit a target you can't see" and "If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there" come to mind.
5. Friction about some details and plans leads to better plans. But, neither ignoring the schedule because we choose not to "own it" nor demanding that the original plan be followed at all costs will benefit the Project.

Project schedules are typically necessary. It might be a list. It might be a 2,376 item graphic. It might be milestones on a calendar. Whatever form it takes, we can expect that the schedule that's developed early in the project will need some adjustment as we go along. And, we can expect that someone working on the Project who ignores the plan and schedule will generally fail to deliver.

YourSelf as a Project

Interesting post titled "42 Practical Ways to Improve Yourself" by Celestine Chua over at Lifehack. (She also has her own blog about Personal Excellence.)

To keep improving our Project work, we have to also make a Project of ourselves.


Notice a few of her personal items that also sound like Project work:

• Overcome your fears
• Level up your skills
• Get out of your comfort zone
• Put someone up to a challenge
• Identify your blind spots
• Ask for feedback

42 ways to do something is both interesting and overwhelming (how will I ever do all of those?). We can pick a few that strike our interest and work on those first. Then, go back for more - for us, for our Teams and for our Projects.

Make Better Project Connections


Sometimes we talk about Projects as if they are objects that live on their own. Projects never see a start or a completion without people working on them. Every Project ends up with at least one Customer (someone who receives or experiences the result of the project) and an Executor (at least one person who carries out the steps needed to deliver the project). Most of us, however, never work on such "simple" Projects.


Most of us work on Projects that have more than one Customer - often a group of diverse, complicated people who are expecting to experience the benefit of the Project work. Most of us work on Projects with a team of folks doing the Project work with the same issues - they are varied and complex and temperamental and all the rest. To deliver the Project successfully, everyone on the project team needs to be focused on connecting in a way that leads to the desired project results.

To connect, we have to be able to communicate. We have to be able to ask, answer, listen, observe, notice, respond, anticipate, understand, consider, and debate. Some people avoid this part of Project work. They'd rather build or code or make or write or do. You've probably heard that saying that "Work would be fun if it wasn't for the other people involved." 

But, connecting deliberately is a non-negotiable part of Project execution.

How are you doing at connecting? At doing your part to see that you and others working on the Project are asking, answering, listening, observing, noticing, responding, anticipating, understanding, considering and debating for the good of the Project?