#projectcon #agilecon PROJECTCON | AGILECON Midwest 2019 in Indianapolis on May 10, 2019 Presenter: Michael Hannan Acceleration & Focus - A Simple Approach to Faster Execution Many articles & books emphasize the importance of focus to getting more done, but not many offer proven techniques to achieve big jumps in focus for entire teams—and thus accelerate the speed of execution dramatically. This session will provide a simple, common-sense method to achieve such acceleration for teams of any size, and at any scale. Event Website: https://projectconevent.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/projectcon-llc Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ProjectConEvent Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/projectconevent YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLLG1SGPs1L5YLoFndvGGhQ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/projectconevent Presentation Slides: https://slideshare.com/projectcon Post Event Trailer: https://youtu.be/1_RzFBnZ7bo ProjectCon AgileCon Project Management

1. Acceleration & Focus - A Simple
Approach to Faster Execution

2. Acceleration & Focus
Michael Hannan
CEO, Fortezza Consulting
A Simple Approach to
Faster Execution

3. Mr. Hannan is Founder & Principal Consultant of Fortezza Consulting, a best-selling author, professional
speaker, and innovator of techniques to drive unprecedented improvements in project portfolio
performance. He has coached and trained thousands of people at all levels in what you will learn today.
Mike also serves on the board of the nonprofit, Project Management for Change (www.PM4Change.org),
and is the lead author of the book, The CIO’s Guide to Breakthrough Project Portfolio Performance.
On the personal side, he is a happily married father of three college-age men, and a 2019
world-record-setting, national-champion track athlete.
About Your Presenter
3

4. 4
My promise to you for this session:
Help you improve personal, team, and organizational focus—in a simple,
measurable way.
My wild-eyed stretch goal for this session:
Help you maximize your impact as leaders, so that you might advance
humankind through the pursuit of dramatically higher levels of organizational
performance.
Copyright © 2019 Fortezza Consulting, LLC

5. On September 11, 2001, the largest sealift rescue initiative in the history
of humankind was carried out, rescuing over 35 times more people per
hour than the next largest — the 1940 evacuation of Dunkirk.
Youtube search “9-11 Boatlift”
What Do These Four Things Have in Common?
1.
= 500 people
The 9-11 rescue
throughput
5
Dunkirk’s rescue
throughput

6. In the past 10 years, a major pharmaceutical company found a way to
double the number of life-saving drugs it brought to market, with no
increase in cost.
6
2.
What Do These Four Things Have in Common?

7. In the span of just a few years, Amazon went from deploying new
software < 10 times a day to deploying new software more than
7,000 times a day.3.
= 10 times a day
What Do These Four Things Have in Common?

8. In its first 8 years, SpaceX made space launches 5x less costly,
and in the next 8 years, expects to make them 100x less costly.
4.
Cost per lb to Low-earth Orbit
What Do These Four Things Have in Common?

9. PMI’s Pulse of the Profession: 2011-2018
9
Source: Project Management Institute, February 2018

10. Complex problems need complex solutions
Avoid These—Even When
They Seem Appropriate
Embrace These—Even When
They Seem Inappropriate
Inherent simplicity can always be found
Conflicts require compromise solutions
Every conflict can be removed; we just need
to find the right assumption to challenge
People are blameworthy—and
need to be held accountable!
People genuinely want to help make
the organization better
Saying “I know “
Yes, we know a lot…but every situation can
be substantially improved…there are always
things we don’t yet know!
“How might we…?”
Mindset Needed to Achieve Breakthroughs

11. Technique Authority
Required
Level to Apply Origin(s) Primary Purpose
Project
Staggering
Executive,
PMO Leader
Across the
organization or
project portfolio
Critical Chain Project
Management (CCPM)
• Improve Portfolio
Throughput
ACCLAIM
Focus &
Flow™
None
Individuals &
Teams of any
size
Lean, Agile, Psychology,
Theory of Constraints
• Improve Project
Speed
• Improve Project
Reliability
• Improve Portfolio
Throughput
The Two Most Powerful Techniques to
Boost Focus
11

12. Technique 1 Project Staggering
12
Technique 1

13. Three types of tasks, requiring
three different resources:
▪ A – Planning, Scoping,
Prioritizing
▪ B – Architecting, Developing,
Integrating, System Testing
▪ C – User Acceptance Testing
The sooner we start ….
Three simple projects
Seven weeks each
Project Staggering: Simple Example
13

14. Delay Delay Delay
High resource utilization
Delay
The Illusion of Progress
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15. 15
P4
8
6
4
Simultaneous Projects
Staggered Projects
Simultaneous vs. Staggered Projects
Copyright ©2018FortezzaConsulting,LLC

16. • This one technique alone has sometimes doubled or tripled the throughput
of project completions.
• Agile tenets are consistent with staggering, but staggering is not an Agile
requirement; the organization must apply the necessary discipline and tools
to implement staggering.
• Executive stakeholders must be convinced that a project start date weeks or
months in the future will result in an earlier finish.
• Staggering helps expose hidden resource bottlenecks, helping to focus the
organization on how it might get even more projects done.
• Individual efficiency must be subordinated to the goal of maximizing
throughput.
Project Staggering: Key Takeaways
16

17. ACCLAIM Focus & Flow™
17
2x 3x 4x
6x
8x
12x
Technique 2

18. Task-switching Game
Round # 1 Round # 2
18
TASK SWITCHING

19. Typical Game Results
19
DataPoints
First round results
with task switching
Second round
results with
focus
Time to Complete
Almost twice as fast!
2σ ~ 90% 2σ ~ 60%

20. 20
• Block off calendar time
• Turn off Outlook pop-up
notifications
• Put your phone on silent
• Turn on a “heads down”
auto-reply email
• Put a sign on your door
• Work from home, and/or
work non-standard hours
• Noise-cancelling
headphones
A Few Simple Ways to Drive Single-Tasking

21. 21
Crafting a More Disciplined Approach for
Single Tasking
• Theory of Constraints, Psychology
– Single-tasking is a highly effective way to minimize lead times for human tasks.
– Maximizing flow across an end-to-end process (system) can only be done once the system
constraint is identified.
• Lean/Kanban
− Visualizing the actual flow of work—especially for workflows that aren’t inherently visual—is
critical for team members to identify impediments and to experiment with improvement ideas.
− Enabling the system to “pull” work, vs. having work assigned or “pushed,” tends to improve
flow while empowering teams.
− Minimizing batch sizes—ideally down to a batch size of one, or “single-piece flow”—can
generate impressive flow improvements.
− Keeping “work in progress” (or WIP) at or near optimal capacity helps maximize flow.
• Agile/Scrum, Psychology
− The team can find ways to improve flow more effectively than any single member.
− The team is much more motivated when working under a disciplined framework designed to
foster team autonomy.

22. How Do We Know Whether Single Tasking is
Actually Happening?
Number of
“Doers”
8
Ensure that this
number…
6
…is never higher than
this number

23. Previous
productivity
level
Impediments; lapses
in single-tasking
Improved
single-task
discipline
Over
2X!
2 months
Example: 40-person Software Development Team

24. WIP Limits vs WIP Targets
The Limitations of WIP Limits
• “I’ve set a limit on each of you, and
you all must comply!”
• Some workers feel incentivized to
“game the system.”
• Not as conducive to a “How might
we…?” culture.
• No good way to know where to set
the limit.
Why a WIP Target Based on
Single-Tasking Is Better
• Encourage a target based on
single-task behavior.
• Allows total flexibility for teaming
up on tasks.
• If you’re way over or under target,
the team can see it and explore
why.
• Fosters experimentation.
• “We trust you, and want to help
you pursue ever-higher levels of
team performance.”

25. Additional Guidance
• Breaking down tasks into granular subtasks is key—but must be done with as little
additional overhead burden as possible
• Marking a Task “Blocked” vs. “Escalate”
• Marking a task “Blocked” indicates that progress is halted or slowed significantly for some
reason, but that the team thinks it can remove the block without any management
intervention.
• Marking a blocked task “Escalate” indicates that the team needs management intervention in
order to clear the block
• Task sizing
• Each task card has a field for “Size,” which can be used to estimate the # of hours (or other
numerical sizing, such as story points)
• While this can be useful, we never want any task owners to “pace themselves” to this estimate;
rather, we want to encourage early delivery whenever possible
• Task sequencing
• Sequencing of high-level tasks are done in the PM’s project plan (Gantt chart)
• Sequencing of task-board tasks must be done manually by placing predecessor tasks
before successor tasks in the To Do column
25

26. Checklist for Effective Task Board Operation
26
Happy to send you these checklist documents—just email me at Mike@FortezzaConsulting.com to request!

27. Staggering + ACCLAIM Focus & Flow
27
Staggering
A B C
Staggering + ACCLAIM Focus & Flow
A B C
A B C
A B C
A B C
A B C
A B C
4 Project
Completions
7 Project
Completions
Assuming a 35%
improvement in the flow of
task completions…

28. ACCLAIM Focus & Flow: Key Takeaways
28
• Effectively addresses two key issues inherent in knowledge-work
• How to delegate effectively without micromanaging people
• How to provide/receive frequent, meaningful feedback
• Can be applied to any environment, as long as four conditions exist:
1) There is a pool of resources that can be managed as a group
2) We can ensure that there is always a ready supply of fine-grained tasks
3) Task owners can “pull” tasks when ready, one at a time, in priority and sequential order
4) We can get closer and closer to our target ratio of task owners to tasks in process—or
“WIP Target.”
• Complements key characteristics of Agile/Scrum
• Self-organized Scrum Teams, user stories, story points, backlogs, burndown charts,
retrospectives, customer transparency, scope buffering, and more
• Offers an option to replace time-boxed sprints with single-piece flow to improve
velocity and predictability of execution

29. Wrap-Up: Summary of Key Benefits
29
• Two Concrete Ways to Pursue Aggressive Goals
• Helps Your People Showcase Their Value as High-Impact Players
• “Working Smarter, Not Harder”
• Achieve Speed and Reliability Gains Without Additional Resources or Overtime
• Gives Your People More Autonomy to Do Their Jobs
• Allows PMs, Resource Managers, and Leads to Plan Better
• Allows Task Owners and Teams More Freedom to Execute More Intelligently
• Allows Executives to Better Align Execution to Capacity
• Helps Foster a Stronger Unity of Purpose at All Levels
• Lower Stress and Better Health for All Staff
• Promotes Personal Development
• Helps Your Organization Thrive

30. Michael Hannan
Founder & Principal Consultant
Fortezza Consulting
Mike@FortezzaConsulting.com
wwwFortezzaConsulting.com

31. ProjectConEvent.com