Schlagwort-Archive: Feasible

Explore with PO potentials

In digital times, not many people are aware of how limited bivalent choices are. Even though the analogue reality takes place between the two poles of one and zero. The Western value system shows, how strongly this thinking affects every single pore. They oscillate between good and evil; between right and wrong; between black and white. The fact that the area in between contains an immeasurable number of alternatives does not always seem to be clear. The huge gray area is ignored. There is for a long time a way out of the dilemma of yes and no – by exploring with PO potentials.

Edward de Bono described the concept in detail already in the seventies. And yet, it seems to have slipped past everyday life. For this reason, here are a few possibilities for PO.

  • Use the impossible
    An alternative, which is to be rejected for good reasons, is far more than what speaks against it. Just as everything always has two sides, there is in every rejection additional potential for further solutions. Instead of using the classic No to suppress further reflection, the application of PO prevents to terminate the thought process prematurely. The associations attached with the negative alternative can be further used. Good examples are Post-its. The question of the meaningfulness of an adhesive which does not adhere would have been prevented removable notes and papers of any size. PO creates the freedom to continue toying with a thought, instead of immediately burying a proposal with a No. The number of solutions that is prevented is infinitely great. PO helps to rephrase the No.
  • Use the nonsense
    A major challenge is dealing with obviously absurd connections. The potential for completely new solutions can be found exactly here. Let us take the current trend of agility in bureaucratic companies as an example. How do you disrupt the inertia of the participants? Take an object that is within your reach. Connect agility with the object! Overcome the incomprehension of the first moment. Do not reject the context a priori! Use PO to step back and look at the two facts with a fresh look. If you have already overcome your resistance, you are already creating unexpected connections. Transfer your insights from the links that you’ve found. Whatever it is, it will make the introduction of agility more likely. PO is the fuel that enables to think the unthinkable.
  • Further develop feasible
    If you found the right thing, the spontaneous joy of the Eureka slows down the further kneading of the thought. And there is always more in something good. The best solution is always connected to further alternatives. The tendency to interrupt the flow of thought is the greatest hurdle for more. This could lead with additional tinkering to further or even completely new solutions. If, for example, the complete juice was pressed out of an orange, one might be tempted to throw away the skin. Although it contains active ingredients that help with respiratory problems, skin problems and an increased cholesterol level. This will enable further use of the already positive effect of the vitamin C. PO increases an already effective result.

Bottom line: PO opens up the world of possibilities. It helps not to give in to the first impulse, and to interrupt the productive flow of thought by not making any further thinking. A negative result is not sufficiently exhausted by rejection, although it provides the basis for further ideas. The accidental linking of completely absurd aspects can lead to entirely new inspirations. Even the positive solution can be multiplied by continuing thinking about it, despite its good results. PO is the missing link in yes-no cultures for an open approach to the endless opportunities that could be discovered. No more $ale of the century. From now on, more often exploring with Po potentials.

Theoretical feasible is not enough

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More and more tasks are realized in cross-functional projects. The most important differences to tasks that are accomplished in line responsibility are

  • changing subjects,
  • heterogeneous composition of teams,
  • different time-frames, and
  • above all temporally limited assignments to a project.

Work packages become more compact and the necessary work time shorter with agile approaches. Eventually, project managers and employees have to work and control many tasks within more or less the same time. However theoretical feasible is not enough, in order to get to a realistic utilization rate.

Jonglieren01

In the old days, when things were produced in a way that you could take, weigh and measure them, the effects and the necessities were closely linked with one another. Activities in the project that produce and process information cannot be measured in the same way. As a consequence more and more different tasks are assigned to the same person. What is the basis to better assign the tasks?

  • Role
    The required role is described by the tasks, authority and the responsibility. Projects manager have the task to lead an initiative, need for this purpose sufficient authority to decide and are responsible for a successful conclusion. Team members receive tasks according to their abilities to create something with the appropriate authorization and the responsibility that goes beyond the correct delivery of results. Neither the individual roles are clarified, nor are the employees characterized sufficiently. This can quickly lead to an overload of the team.
  • Expertise
    The most probable is that the expertise will be considered. To what extent the project manager should have technical knowledge apart from its control of project management, can be decided in the respective assignment. If the PM-knowledge is not well developed, the project can fail because of the lack of goals, plans or bad control, but not so much due to missing specialized know-how. On contrary, not existing expertise of the employees has considerable effects. Bad PM-knowledge is then replaceable by the good guidance of the project manager.
  • Availability
    Often it is sufficient to be simply available at a certain time, at a certain place. Unfortunately these are seldom the really required know-how carriers, but new or less competent employees. Since the start and the end can only be synchronized with difficulties across project borders, there will be idle running times or overload of the teams, while a project does not find an end the new project generates too fast, too much effort.

Surprisingly, the extent of utilization of the individual employee is not enough considered or not regarded at all. In the absence of resource planning across project borders the actual, temporal load does not become visible. At the same time only a few people know the number of doable, parallel activities. How many projects can be put responsibly in one hand? How many tasks can be realized at the same time? The theoretically feasible number has to be regarded in individual cases. But in principle the timeframe and the setup time times set natural limits that are not related to the capability of the employee.

  • Time-frames
    The time-frames of the individual project plans and the necessary expenditures are usually not even considered in the Multi PM cross-functionally. If an employee needs five working days per project for his tasks, he/she cannot take part to more than four projects in a month.
  • Setup times
    The setup times between the different projects burden the existing time budget additionally. The related files have to be searched, the current conditions checked and the next steps have to be planned. The more often you jump from one project to another, the less time is available for the actual work.
    Let’s assume that the projects mentioned above (four projects with in each case 5 working days) are switched only once from one day to the other, the respective setup time is hidden in the 5 active days.
    But if we change half daily with a setup time of half an hour, then the change burdens the work with already five hours.
    If we have to leave one project to enter the next one (5 minutes for storing the results and 10 minutes for renewed set-up) the load increases to ten hours.
    If than there is an additional relocation (to another plant or another building), the change can easily cost an hour or more. It results in two hours per day, i.e. forty hours per month. This represents nearly five person days that are missing for the real work.

Bottom line: Estimations become practically feasible, if you select the calculation basis realistically. Without the proper preparation of a project, a reliable planning is only possible with difficulties. For this purpose, besides the actual planning, the role descriptions, the required expertise and the availability of the respective employees as well as their current utilization must be determined. If you ignore the timeframe and the setup times, this will inevitably lead to overload and probably to project failure.