Context Matters

Springtime in Indiana is like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re gonna get. – Inspired by Forrest Gump

The Blackmore house sat back from the highway, on top of a hill, at the end of a driveway flanked by a row of short, very climbable dogwood trees. The house felt large, with big square rooms, thick carpet and a heavy flagstone fireplace set into the wall. There was a red barn, a goat pen, a garden plot, and a two-car garage. In front of the barn, which I can’t remember ever entering, was a square concrete pad where I would ride my Big Wheel in wide circles, swerving around my brother as he practiced free-throws.  We are in Indiana after all. 

We moved into the Blackmore house when my Dad retired from the Navy.  I was four, my brother was eleven. Everything before is a series of blurry images, my memories indistinguishable from the pages of polaroids in our photo albums. It was clear to me even then, that we lived in the middle of nowhere. It was a thirty-minute drive into town. My Dad worked as a communication specialist for a US Navy base surprisingly situated in land-locked southern Indiana. We were surrounded by corn fields, cow pastures and white-oak forests. 

I learned at school that many of my classmates had parents also working at the Base, and those were good jobs to have. We were lucky. Mom stayed home, picking me up from half day kindergarten and taking me into town for library visits and grocery runs. On special days we would browse the aisles at the Dollar General, or later rent VHS tapes from the local video store. It was small-town living, riding bikes on gravel roads and swimming lessons at the town pool. My memories of this time and place are always Fall, the leaves have turned golden, and the Maple helicopter seeds are drifting down to the sidewalks; its sepia toned and muted.  

I also came to notice that not all houses were created equal, and that some were blessed with garages and basements.  These two features were blessings that made life in rural Indiana just a little bit easier.  While Indiana isn’t situated in the traditionally defined “Tornado Alley” these sudden, devastating weather events were a part of our reality.  The joy of spring-time after our long, gray winters, is tempered by the threat of storms. It’s a delicate balance to pray for rain to nourish our fields, but not so much that the clouds turn violent and the wind rips your home apart. Basements, finished or not, are important safety features.  We were trained as school children to listen for the sirens, get as low as possible, move away from windows, and cover our heads. Living in a house with a basement increased the odds of survival.

Garages offered a different sort of weather benefit. If you are from the midwest you know the trope, “If you don’t like the weather now, just wait a few hours.” Our temperatures roller-coaster through the seasons, it rains and snows, sleets and hails, the moisture freezes and melts.  If your car is parked in a garage, you are shielded from these extremes. Your vehicle is warm and dry each morning. Your grocery sacks don’t designate in your arms as you unload them into the house.  It’s such a small thing, but it just makes life a tiny bit easier. 

A garage also offers a ton of extra space, which is lovely for tucking away holiday decorations and bicycles, all of the extra outside toys the kids love. The garage is also a place of invention, a space with power tools and wood scraps patiently waiting to be turned into skateboard ramps and derby carts.  Overtime, this versatile space becomes cluttered with debris.  If I don’t know where something belongs, the garage is the go-to holding space, out of sight out of mind.  This works great, of course, until we actually want to use the garage to cover our cars. 

Every six-months or so, we clean out the garage. We know where we are, a family with a space cluttered with projects and boxes and randomly only one roller skate.  We know where we want to go, we want to be a family with space to park our car out of the rain next week. We are easily oriented in this project.  The scope and sequence of steps to get from here to there are clear.  First we will move everything out so that we can see and maneuver.  Next we’ll sort through our stuff deciding what to keep, trash, recycle or donate. Then we will sweep the floor clear and return our “keep” items back to their logical spots, neatly stacking them on the shelves or hanging them in their racks.  We throw all of the trash in the bin.  Finally, the car is loaded with the items for donation or recycling and we drive across town to share the love.         

Only there are a couple of hiccups, realities of life that we must take into account, constraints that must be considered.  There aren’t enough shelves or bins available, we need two people to lift and move the pitcher’s mound we are storing.  The recycling center is only open on weekends.  Our plan for cleaning out the garage must consider these factors, we’ll have to adjust how we execute accordingly.  

It’s kind of silly, but the only difference between this simple house project and my complicated technical transfer projects in the office is one of scale.  Both move through the same phases of the Contextual Gantt Planning System (CGPS): Orienting, Scoping, Sequencing and Constraining.  Standing in my garage or sitting at my desk, in either scenario my next step will be Reconciliation, which is the process of calibrating the plan, reality and the goal.  

For example, I know that I need two people to move the pitcher’s mound, and my husband out of town this weekend.  If I want to get the job done this weekend, then I must address this constraint.  My options include finding a neighbor, seeing if my son can lift it, asking a friend to stop-by the house or delaying the project for my husband’s return.  The simplest, quickest path is to walk next door and ask for help. By deciding and implementing this course of action, to secure additional resources, I have reconciled my plan, to my reality and to my goal.

On to the next challenge, my project requires additional storage bins. If I want to finish today, I must address this constraint.  My options are to repurpose other bins in the house, pop over to the store or find an alternative container. I’d rather not invest the time and money today, running to the store is an unnecessarily expensive solution to my problem.  It may take a little longer, but remain within my day, to check my basement for other options.  A few minutes of investigation in the house uncovers a perfectly suitable plastic tote currently being under-utilized downstairs.  By locating acceptable alternative materials, I have again reconciled my plan, to my reality and to my goal.

There will always be constraints within projects.  If your expectation is that all of the puzzle pieces are going to fit perfectly into place to achieve your goal, you are going to be frustrated. It’s going to feel like your job is to squeeze square pegs into round holes.  We have to manage our projects within the context and reality that we find ourselves.  However, the good news is that we don’t have to accept every constraint at face value.  Oftentimes we can influence our reality and many (though not all) constraints can be reconciled through creative problem solving and collaboration.

Reconciliation takes time and patience; you will have to work and re-work the problem until an acceptable solution is identified.  As in a negotiation, you will have to decide which of your requirements must be satisfied, and which may have some flexibility.  You may have to re-think previous held beliefs, or invest money, or ask for help.  Like a tangled necklace, stick with it.  Pick and pull and test until the knot until what seems impenetrable unravels again.  Project management requires persistence and tenacity.  We cannot accept inaction in the face of a constraint, we must have a willingness to systematically reconcile as many constraints as possible.   

This continuous cycle of constraint reconciliation was described within the Theory of Constraints (TOC) management philosophy developed by Eliyahu M. Goldratt in the 1980s. The TOC provides us with structure, advising that we focus on the most limiting constraint first. Goldratt even gives us a roadmap through the reconciliation process by recommending Five Focusing steps: 

• Identify the Constraint: Determine the most limiting factor in the system.
• Exploit the Constraint: Make the best possible use of the constraint without significant investments or changes.
• Subordinate Everything Else to the Constraint: Align the entire system’s processes and resources to support the constraint’s optimal performance.
• Elevate the Constraint: Take actions to increase the constraint’s capacity or eliminate it entirely.
• Repeat the Process: Once a constraint is addressed, identify the next one and repeat the process to achieve continuous improvement.

In project management, we can apply this approach to our critical path.  First reconcile the most limiting constraint on the path, once that is addressed move to the next most limiting constraint and so forth down the line. Work the constraints until you have a plan that is reconciled to your reality and the goal.  By focusing the team’s attention on the most impactful issues, in a simple, systematic and logical way you will add strategic value to the project.    

These two steps, constraining and reconciling, are iterative. Iteration is the final step of the CGPS approach and the subject of next week’s post.  In complex projects, the work will take time and energy.  You will have moments of alignment that come together and break apart again into dissonance as the project evolves. Knowing and accepting this as the natural cycle of projects will help you prepare to ride the rollercoaster.  Projects are just like the weather in Indiana, if you don’t like where you are at, that’s okay because change is coming.

#Reconciliation