Empirical Process Control: "steering" a project that involves volatility, uncertainty, complexity and adaptability.
Sutherland[1] suggests that a team tackling a project is very much light a flight crew tackling a complex mission:
- observe conditions to know where you are
- orient yourself to your intentions
- decide a plan for these conditions
- act on your plan
- repeat
Ries[2] suggests a slightly different loop to achieve the same effect:
- build enough of your idea to show your audience
- measure how well your audience accepts your product
- learn more about what your audience needs to adjust your idea
- repeat
So, set your team in motion along a path towards envisioned outcomes, give your team a framework so that it can look at what it needs, give your team a recurring opportunity to regroup and re-assess the current results together as it works toward its outcomes, and give your team room to get the job done (Fussell[3]).
Agile process control such as Scrum can provide useful rules to build a suitable framework for your team to observe what's needed, orient to the current circumstances, decide on actions to take, act on the chosen incremental plan. Your team has an opportunity to limit how much of its work becomes wasted.
- Team stands together regularly to review impediments and progress (observe, orient, decide or learn)
- Team works away within the limits of a set time box (act or build)
- Team shares a common task status board to see and share progress (observe, orient or measure)
- Team meets regularly to update common vision and maintain momentum (orient, decide or learn)
- Product Owner manages all incoming requests and priorities to protect team momentum while also steering the priorities to match current circumstances for the client or organization
So, how does this work with Last Planner?
[1]:Sutherland, Jeff. Scrum - the art of doing twice the work in half the time. Crown Publishing. New York. 2014
[2]:Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup: how today's entrepreneurs use continuous innovation to create radically successful businesses. Crown Business. New York. 2011.
[3]:Fussell, Chris. Goodyear, C.W. One Mission: how leaders build a team of teams. Penguin Random House. New York. 2017.