Making It Happen
Copyright © 1998 by Mackenzie Kyle
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John Wiley & Sons Canada Limited
6045 Freemont Blvd.
Mississauga, Ontario
L5R 4J3
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Kyle, Mackenzie, 1966-
Making it happen: a non-technical guide to project management eISBN: 978-0-470-73993-8
1. Industrial project management. I. Title.
HD69.P75K.4’04 C98-931280-1
Production Credits
Cover & text design: JAQ, RGD
Printer: Tri-Graphic Printing
Preface
This book has two things to offer you as a reader.
The first is a unique and superior approach to the discipline of project management. Much is known about projects (and vastly more is written), but not much is widely understood. The ideas presented here were refined over many years by individuals who have spent their careers in the field, making the concepts of the management sciences work. This useful approach was not developed without cost and frustration, and there is a great deal contained here that you will find nowhere else.
The second is the manner in which the ideas are conveyed. Learning should always be an adventure, although sometimes it is not. If you’ve ever stumbled through a dry textbook, struggling to make important information stick in your brain, you’ll appreciate the alternative approach taken by this book. Without the excitement generated by discovery, it is very hard to retain, let alone implement, new ideas.
Making learning interesting has been one of the greatest challenges of my job. My colleagues and I have developed a number of techniques for doing this, and in the course of our work, experienced a great deal of success in improving how companies operate. In early 1993, I decided to take the approach that became the following story. This is not another attempt to make a simple subject complex, nor to make a complex subject seem simple. It is a demonstration of how simple it really is.
If you choose this book to assist you in your learning adventure, you will follow the “real life” journey of discovery of a person not unlike yourself, and see the application of new and powerful ideas to the discipline of making things happen.
Mackenzie Kyle
MNP
Calgary, Alberta
September 2008
Part One
Genesis
1
Sink or Swim
“So you see, we’ll need a work breakdown structure almost immediately,” he said.
“I see,” I said. I didn’t.
“Ralph is also asking for earned value cost analysis, and he wants you to keep the scope flexible, understand?” he asked me.
“I understand,” I said. I didn’t.
“And he wants self-empowered work teams running the show on this one,” he continued.
“Got it,” I said, pretending to take notes. I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.
“And the whole thing has to be part of our new Total Quality Management initiative,” he said.
I groaned. This was the last straw. Now was the time to get off this boat. “I’m not sure you have the right person for the job, Stu.”
I could tell by the way he looked at me that this was not what he wanted to hear. I prepared myself for his response, praying my lack of enthusiasm would get me bounced off the project team.
I didn’t hold out much hope. Stu Barnes is the vice-president of Operations at Hyler Recreation Systems Inc., and my boss. Me, I’m Will Campbell, and I’m in charge of Hyler’s Information Systems, or IS, group. Stu and I had worked together for almost three years by the time we had this conversation, and we knew each other pretty well. Although Stu looked and talked like a Marine Drill Sergeant (which is exactly what he used to be), he is the best boss I have ever had. While this was a good thing most of the time, it also meant that Stu was used to me whining.
“Look, Will,” he started in, “you know how I feel about all this stuff, but Ralph is the boss, and we all know that Ralph has his sights set on much bigger things than Hyler. If that means riding the crest of whatever wave comes rolling in from head office, that is exactly what he’ll do. And that means that’s exactly what we’ll do.”
Ralph Borsellino is the president of Hyler Recreation and at 34, the youngest president ever. The top brass at Mantec, our parent company, was very impressed with Ralph, and word was that he was on his way up in the organization.
Inwardly, I groaned again. Stu was right. If Ralph wanted it, that is the way it would be.
The Company
The meeting had not started out badly. “So what we have here,” Stu had been telling me, “is a major opportunity to complement our existing product line, and you know how they love that kind of thing at head office in Denver. Not only will it create new customers, but if our experience is anything like what they’ve seen in Europe, it will lead to more sales of our existing products further down the line.”
This was exciting news. Although I had spent the last 18 months in the Information Systems area, Hyler was a small organization and everyone knew the ground rules. Our company was just a stop-over for the up-and-coming movers and shakers at Mantec. Innovation leading to expanded sales was a sure ticket for promotion out of Hyler. But to put all of that in context, I should tell you a little bit about the organization.
Andrew Hyler started the company during the war to make life boats and life rafts for the U.S. Navy. He located his operation in Enderby, Oregon, just outside Portland. Like many war-time industrialists with a guaranteed demand and price, he was successful. When the war ended and new military contracts were not forthcoming, Andrew decided to go on making boats, but now they would be pleasure boats. Everyone called him crazy, especially since he lived way out in Oregon, where there were not a lot of people.
Old Andrew must have seen what was coming because he did very well for himself. After the war, just about all forms of recreation became popular and boating was no exception. Since Hyler was the only manufacturer on the West Coast, he had a definite competitive advantage. Not only did he build better boats than they made back East, he could sell them cheaper because his shipping costs were a fraction of the competition’s. He had such a grip on the market that none of the Eastern manufacturers even bothered to open up a West Coast plant. When aluminum boats became popular, Andrew was well positioned to scoop that market too.
By the time the sixties rolled around, Andrew Hyler was getting on and he no longer wanted the day-to-day hassles of running a business. In 1967 he sold the company to Mantec Corporation, a major conglomerate whose holdings included oil and gas fields, refineries, pulp mills, trucking companies, and vast amounts of real estate. The purchase of a boat plant was the final step in an elaborate plan that the Mantec executives had worked out. Hyler was to be a training ground for developing managers. “Trainees” could make their mistakes and learn at Hyler, where the stakes