[email protected] (314) 234-9651 How Planning for Success Can Open the Door to Failure Bill Schoening Aug 31, 2005 – St. Louis, MO.

[email protected](314) 234-9651

How Planning for Success Can Open the Door to Failure

Bill Schoening

Aug 31, 2005 – St. Louis, MO

Failure Comes in Many Forms

• Massive cost overruns• Huge schedule delays• Products that customers do not like• Show-cause letters• Cancellation

Every failure is an embarrassment for Boeing – and for us as employees

How does this happen?

Today’s Topics

• What do we do that leads to failure?

• How can we recognize potential failures?

• What can we do to avoid failure?

Excitement of the Win

Then We Plan for Success

Doom &Gloom

Doubters Not Welcome

Risk Management: • Address what we can handle • Ignore the rest

Ignoring High Risk = Accepting High Risk

How We React without a Plan

• Panic

•Failure

• Press on with what we know – even if it is wrong

• Hope with untried approaches

• Overwhelmed

R.I.P.

“Solved” Problems Reoccur

• Underlying causes– Long lag between decision and effect– Months, maybe even weeks, are too long for

humans to perceive

• Solutions– Charge someone with stepping back and looking

for recurring problems on a regular basis

Impossible Objectives

• Underlying causes– Requirements viewed as untouchable– Solution is “just around the corner”– Rarely teach

• Learning to suspect something is impossible• Learning to show something is impossible

• Solutions– Teach how to demonstrate that something is

impossible

length

beam

lengthbeam ≈ constant

Turret Diameter

ShipWeight

Demonstrating Why Not

Max

Unknown User Needs

• Underlying causes– Focus on written requirements rather than users– Important user needs discovered late in

development

• Solutions– Validate early and often– Primary objective is discovery, not showing– Requires real users, not surrogates

Verification and Validation

Verification – process for demonstrating that a product satisfies written specifications.

Validation – process for discovering unmet needs ?

?

So this

doesn’t

happen

Frequent Surprises• Underlying causes

– Managing things rather than intellectual content– Questions imply unknowns– Questions that go unanswered too long represent

significant risks– Plans focus on deliverables and not on answering

questions

• Solutions– Keep a running list of significant unanswered

questions with due dates– Making answering questions part of the plan

Insufficient Time & Resources• Underlying causes

– Do not understand tasks – Staff before inputs are ready– Defer difficult tasks too often

Done

Defer

Done

Defer

• Solutions– Understand the necessary

steps leading to SRR and SFR– Match staffing to plan– Hold NAR on feasibility of

plan execution before starting

“Quick Fixes” Fail

• Underlying causes– Denial of risk– Lack of mitigation plans– Or even contingency plans– Quick, easy fix looks good, but has unknown

consequences

• Solutions– Preplan courses of action– Pre-examine consequences of actions

Not Asking for Help

• Underlying causes– Loss of self esteem when asking for help– Non-advocate reviews come too late– Failure to consider possibility of catastrophic failure

• Solutions– Gate reviews address plans for when things go very

wrong– Pay attention to symptoms of potential failure

In Conclusion

• Programs will fail if we are not prepared for really bad occurrences

• Risk Management is not enough• Must teach and institutionalize

– How to look– Not to be afraid to look– Looking frequently

• Do we need a new process?“Discover Potential Catastrophes!”