Class in Shanghai, 2008

Workshop
Quality On Time
How to deliver the right results, at the right time - no excuses needed

Of course your projects always delivered successfully and on time. Or, perhaps not always? Or you may know some projects by people who, although quite capable in their profession, deliver late, which in turn may affect the cost and the quality of what they deliver?

For example: a space project led by very capable Systems Engineers developing an Earth observation instrument. They said: “We've done this kind of work for 27 years. We’re very good at this. What do you think you can still add to that?”, which is, of course, a relevant question. Well, capable as they were, they were well aware that they lacked still one important element of success: being on time. They were missing every deadline, and accused management of setting impossible schedules. After some training and coaching, 9 weeks later and ever since, they were never late and delivered their project result one day early, rather than the usual one year late, saving the company millions. A benefit of this team was that the requirements were a great example of good requirements. In the course we'll also handle this subject.

If you know people who can benefit as much as these space engineers (as well as systems, intelligence, railway, highway, agro, building automation, software, and electronic product development engineers), you may draw their attention to the course: “Quality on Time”. In this course we will introduce the techniques these engineers learned, to be not only successful, but on time as well.

We will study and exercise techniques on how to consistently:

• improve our effectiveness and efficiency
• predict what we will have done and when
• do something about it if we see we won’t make it on time, because failure is not an option
• solve our discipline problem
• maximise our intuition mechanisms
• continuously balance priorities
• keep focus
• cope with differences in disciplines and cultures
• adopt a Zero-Defect attitude
• make your customers happy

Are you and your colleagues already doing all these things? Do you think you are already very effective and efficient? That’s what other people thought too - before they found out otherwise!
Just like the clever space engineers you may think that you are already doing the best you can, and you’re probably right, but this course will show you how to do even better.
Projects have shown within a few weeks spending some 30% less time on better results, allowing them to do about 40% more work with the same people in the same time, with less stress. This will allow you to easily regain the investment of this course back within a few weeks.

This workshop is intended for Systems Engineers, Developers, Architects, Product Owners, Scrum Masters, (Project) Managers, and QA people, who think it's important to deliver Quality On Time: the right results at the right time, no excuses needed. Management because they’re responsible for the result. All others because they determine the result.

Note: This is not just another 'method'. It's a lot of techniques you can use in any method, waterfall, Agile, or otherwise, whichever you are using now.

At the end of this workshop I’ll ask you “Can you afford not to use these techniques?” You’ll know the answer.

Duration

1 or 2 days. The more time, the more exercises.

If we do it in-house, we will exercise on your actual projects, and we'll include another day a week later, to close the first TaskCycle, where your team will learn so much more from what they just did. If we include this extra day, the effect is even more impressive.
Even better is to stretch the learning over some 3 to 5 weeks, starting with a half day introduction, then a planning session the rest of the day, followed by weekly half day sessions. After some 5 weeks you clearly will have delivered better results in some 30% less time.

Preparation

Please read and prepare carefully. The better you prepare, the more you will learn.
Write down:

• The Goal of your current work or project
• The Definition of Success
• The most important stakeholder of your current work or project (Who is waiting for it?)
• The most important requirement for this stakeholder (What is he waiting for?)
• How much value improvement does this stakeholder expect (3 or 7?)
• Any deadlines? (No deadlines: it will take longer)
• What you and your team should and can have achieved in the coming 10 weeks
  (Will you succeed? If yes: great. If not: what could you do about it? - Failure is not an option!)
• What you think you should and can do the coming week to achieve what you’re supposed to achieve
  (How do you make sure that by the end of the week all of this will be done)
• Any issues you expect with the above or otherwise with your work or project

If you find it difficult to write these things down, this workshop is even more important for you. If you come out of the workshop with any change in what you wrote down, this will allow you to work more on the more important things, and less on less important things. Better focus on what really is important immediately saves time. The time you spent coming to this workshop can be regained quickly by applying the techniques you can learn. This may convince your boss to allow you to attend this workshop. Perhaps (s)he’ll even come with you.

What others achieved

• A Dutch space project delivered 1 day early, rather than their usual one year late, saving 40 man-year
• An UK project delivered 1 year late by ignoring this advice, 70 man-year wasted
• A project in the US saved 5 months (20 man-year), winning the company’s Team Excellence Award for being fastest time-to-market at the highest quality in more than 10 years
• A Polish team with an ‘impossible deadline’ of 6 weeks, delivered within 5 weeks to a delighted customer in the US, proudly adding: “Without working overtime!’, as I always suggest.

What others thought

• R&D manager (Ireland): Niels’ Quality On Time approach is “deceptively simple” (which it is).
• Developer (Netherlands): I have never before absorbed so much information in such a short time. Normally such talks drain my energy. This time however, I felt energized!
• Systems Engineer (Israel): This is practical stuff we can start using immediately. I’ve heard many presentations, but this one was absolutely the best.
• Scrum team (UK): At the start of the day: “We are doing Scrum, therefore we are already very efficient and successful. Why do we have to listen to this?” At the end of the day: “Wow! Thanks! This is powerful! We’ll quickly be much more successful and more efficient!” (which they did).
• Satellite Communications engineer (Japan): First I worked 60 hr a week. Now I work 40 hr a week, doing more, and having a family life.
• Development Group Leader (Netherlands): I have taken many project management courses in my life. They all skipped issues like discipline, focus, permanent application of the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle, creating stakeholder value in short cycles, and consciously generating feedback. All problems Niels addresses are mentioned in books that seek solutions in numerous kinds of formal control mechanisms, which do not address the issues at the root of the problems. Niels does, and succeeds too.
• Software Project Manager (Netherlands): First we tried Agile (XP) development. Result: over budget and over time due to informal and direct communication between stakeholders (wish list was too long and unmanaged).
  Then we tried Waterfall with extensive initial documentation (CMM). Result: over budget and over time due to planning problems and changed requirements on delivery.
  Finally we tried Niels' approach. Result: implementation in an unusual short period of time; stakeholder participation much better; end result closer to stakeholder expectations. We keep using this approach.

Lecturer

Niels Malotaux is an independent Project Coach and expert in optimizing project performance. He has over 45 year experience in designing electronic and software systems, at Delft University, in the Dutch Army, at Philips Electronics, and 20 years leading a systems design company. Since 1998 he devotes his expertise to helping projects to deliver Quality On Time: delivering what the customer needs, when he needs it, to enable customer success. To this effect, Niels developed an approach for effectively teaching Evolutionary Project Management (Evo) Methods, Requirements Engineering, Review and Inspection techniques, as well as Reliable Embedded Systems Design, and how to achieve Zero Defects for the customer. Since 2001, he taught and coached well over 400 teams in 40+ organizations in the Netherlands, Belgium, China, Germany, Ireland, India, Israel, Japan, Poland, Romania, South Africa, the UK and the US, which led to a wealth of experience in which approaches work better and which work less well in practice. He is a frequent speaker at conferences.

Upon request we deliver in-company workshops and training. The language can be Dutch or English. All materials are in English.

Contact for more information.