visual management - making it easier to be in control, thursday 30th july 2015

Visual Management Making it Easier to be in Control

Welcome Your presenters are: David Hart RPP FAPM MCMI

Jane Royden BSc MSc DMS MAPM

Project and programme management specialists

E AND H

A clear way forward…..

“The strategy sets an agenda that is uncompromisingly ambitious, creative and radical.

Yet it can be encapsulated in just three words:

all projects succeed

– that is to create a world in which this is taken for granted.”

APM 2020 Vision

• How we came across visual management

• What visual management is – what is visual and what isn’t

• The background theory

• Demo of Targetprocess – visual management software we use and recommend to our clients

• Visual management in practice – where it adds value.

Presentation Outline

• What planning and management tools do you use?

• How effective are they – what is frustrating?

Your World?

• Organisations without a project culture

• Diverse projects – people change, business change, IT

• Need for tools to help control

• Limited project management maturity in most organisations.

Our World:

What is Visual Management?

Charts & Graphs Gantt Chart

Common Visual Tools:

MS Excel

MS Project

Non-visual management systems:

What is good visualisation?

• PM increasingly complex

• Visualisation can enable us to display more complex information in a way that can be understood

• Saving time and money or just pretty graphics?

• Conveys relevant information clearly and simply supporting decision making and action taking.

What is good visualisation?

• Agile project management, especially in IT, has added new dimension to visualisation.

• Kanban boards – 2 dimensional representations

• With the importance of team and collaboration, visibility is really essential

• We came across visual management being used for Agile a few years ago and realised that the same tools could add huge value in other areas.

Where has visual management come from?

Jacques Bertin, The Semiology of Graphics, 1967

Visualisation – the theory:

Visualisation Elements:

Two quantitavie parameters of an object in a flat dimension.

Planar Variables:

X axis represents current status

Y axis is work package priority

Example – Kanban Board:

Retinal Variables

Six retinal variables colour, size, shape, texture, orientation and hue

Retinal Variables

Can visualise more than two parameters at the same time

Planar and Retinal Together!

Extra information on a Kanban Board.

Data Patterns

Category – Grouping by Type

Phase 1 Phase 2

Feature A

Feature B

Timelines

September October November December

Work Area 1 Action or Decision

Task 3

Milestone

2016 2015

2016 2015

Task 4

Task 2

Task 1 Milestone

Work Area 3

Task 5

Milestone

Task 1 Milestone

Milestone

Task 2 Milestone Milestone Work Area 4

Work Area 5

Task 6

Work Area 2

Task 1

Task 1

Task 1

September October November December

Milestone

Task 2 Milestone

Task 2

Action or Decision

Networks – Links and Relations

Variables and Categories - Project Prioritisation

Build the Plan Together

Benefits Dependency Network

All that’s ok but….

Image courtesy of Maggie Smith at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Visual Management Tools

• Visibility – single information source - everyone can see what they need

• Collaboration – everyone working together Everyone actively contributes

• Empowers the team to record progress and so frees project manager up to manage by sharing the administrative overhead

• Control – Project managers can have their management view and set management controls

• Flexes – to the context – configure to suit your project methodology / process.

Why we use VM software:

How could you use visual software tools?

Any thoughts?

If you knew how visual management might be useful – what would it be?

Domain Model

For Programmes and Projects

Basic Project Process

Outputs Workflow

Summary of the Benefits

• Empowers team members to take responsibility

• Enables project manager to control in both project and non-project cultures

• Encourages collaboration through shared visual representations – get everyone literally ‘on the same page’

• Project Manager can configure processes and controls in the background – that are then visible, tangible and easy to follow. Everyone can see non-compliance!!

Visual Management in Practice – Our Experiences

• The organisation that starts 300 projects a year and has no idea of what happens to them!

• The senior manager /stakeholder with the constant ad hoc progress update requests

• Progressing project issues

• Team member(s) who won‘t engage with the process

• Dissapates the ‘Vortex of Chaos‘ – enables you to manage volumes and complexity (in a rapidly changing environment)

Immediately Post Go Live

Structure!!!

Collaboration

On the Screen…. Status

Annie

Steve

Jamie

Annie

On the Screen… Detail

Six Weeks Later

• Adopt an approach that fits with your organisational context – we know visual management is effective in organisations with and without a mature project management culture

• Use the full range of visual elements available – but keep each view simple

• Use visualisation to present complex multi-dimensional data

Getting the best out of Visual Management:

• Present summary information visually to your

top-team decision-makers

• Web-based visual management software is great

for collaborating across different

teams/organisations

• Most people work well visually – but not

everyone does, so tables and figures still need to

be available.

Getting the best out of Visual Management:

To find out more visit our website, where you can register for a trial version of the software

http://www.eandhlimited.com/visual-management.htm

Register

david@eandhlimited.com

@projectjazz

jane@eandhlimited.com

@projectblues

http://www.eandhlimited.com/visual-management.htm

Any Questions?

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