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Case Study:

Gaining Team Consensus in Project Planning - Part 1

By Jerry P. Keslensky  

One of the most difficult and critical aspects of working with a project team is consensus building. This three part case example will take the reader through a structured Constraints Management approach to team consensus building. Several focusing techniques are utilized from the diagramming tools set often referred to as the Thinking Tools₁. The basic process is outlined below.

Step 1: Agree on an ambitious target - The target should have perceived significant benefits. By ambitious we mean that nobody believes it can be achieved. "That would be great, but we can never pull it off." In this step we usually apply the cloud tool₁ to focus the discussion on identifying and resolving conflicts and in developing solution objectives. (This step is the focus of part 1 of this article).

Step 2: Solicit obstacles - "Why can't it be done?" Most people feel that “nobody wants to listen to my concerns”, therefore this approach helps to develop trust and respect. Each obstacle is essentially only one sentence, clearly stated. Go around the group, one person at a time and let everyone contribute or pass until all obstacles are raised. (A maximum of 50 obstacles is recommended to insure that the granularity of discussion is at an appropriate level).

Step 3: Derive intermediate objectives - “What must be achieved so that the obstacles will be overcome?" This is when we create a prerequisite tree diagram₁ to focus the team on separating into manageable pieces, the overwhelming prospect of realizing our ambitious target. (Steps 2 and 3 are the focus of part 2 of this article).

Step 4: Determine actions to produce your objectives - This is when we build an intermediate objective map, a transition tree diagram₁, which focuses the team on individual action steps and their desired effects toward implementing our change objectives.

Step 5: Create a project task network - This is when we convert the intermediate objective map into a project plan, and build a project network identifying tasks and task relationships. (Step 4 and 5 are the focus of part 3 of this article).

Case Story Line: XYZ Parts Division provides replacement parts worldwide to customers. Over the years XYZ’s parts inventory has accumulated excess parts, some of these parts are still active but far exceed any reasonable future demand. Many of these excess parts are no longer needed by XYZ’s current customers and are classified as obsolete. Because the excess parts, inactive parts and obsolete parts continue to grow as a percentage of the total inventory and because the size of the total inventory is larger than XYZ’s management feels is needed to support their current parts sales revenues, XYZ’s management wants to limit or reduce the size of inventory. Currently XYZ’s revenues are not meeting expectation; they are not growing at their desired rate. One reason that revenues are not growing as expected is that many customers are taking their business elsewhere because the parts they want to purchase are not available "on hand" in XYZ’s inventory. There is more and more pressure to add new parts and to beef up stocking levels of other parts. A conflict exists between the desire to limit the size of inventory and the desire to increase the size of inventory.

A cross-functional project team has been assembled to determine a course of action. The team consists of representatives from all of the pertinent domains of the company. The makeup of the team spans both a wide experience and age spectrum. As would be expected there are important issues of consensus building that must be addressed if a cohesive plan is to be constructed by this team.

The team constructed a “cloud”, a focusing tool to explore the resolution of their inventory conflict, as a first step in developing solution objectives.

With the construction of the basic cloud diagram, the team verbalizes the high level objective along with the necessary conditions and their prerequisites. Closer analysis will illuminate the underlying assumptions on which this cloud is based.

Continued on page 2

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